The Asian ICT Council session chairman yesterday gave three points for the country to follow to sustain the country’s growth in information communication technology industry.
Dr. Gwo Jiunn Huang of the Institute for Information Industry, said these three points were by Taiwan to become one of the world’s top ICT countries in the world.
“The Taiwan government has been helping in their ICT development and they have successfully moved from a manufacturing-based ICT to a service-driven ICT,” Huang said.
THREE POINTS
According to Huang, the first thing that a country should do is to create the awareness.
“The people should know what IT is about and its relevance to the community and to the world now. That way, people will understand and later be able to appreciate IT,” he said.
The second is to ensure that the infrastructure is all set up because it is a critical part of the ICT industry’s growth.
“By infrastructure we mean mobile systems to support ICT.”
And the third is “readiness” which includes able manpower to offer services to global companies.
According to Huang, the Philippines has been a very important center for ICT-enabled services which can contribute to the regional ICT development.
“China is known for their software and hardware services while India is known it’s call center and software services. It’s time that other countries in the region also try and carve their niche in the industry,” said Huang.
PH SCENARIO
Jerry Rapes, Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman for ICT made a presentation on what ICT has done for the Philippines including Cebu.
“For software alone, revenue generated last year was $1.5 billion which was 50 percent growth from 2011. Employment also expanded by 10 percent,” said Rapes.
As of 2012, there were already around 55,000 people employed for sofware according to Rapes.
For BPO/IT, the revenue was at $13 billion last year from only $11 billion in 2011 with about 780,000 employees nationwide.
“The goal is to earn $15 billion with 900,000 employee base by 2016,” said Rapes.
In Cebu, there is over a hundred outsourcing companies as of last year employing close to 100 thousand people directly.
PROSPECTS
Rapes added that the country is a complete destination for ICT with the available English-speaking labor pool and the sound business fundamentals now laid out by the present administration.
“The Filipinos scored 7 for the Business English Index, the highest of all the 76 countries that took the exam. We even beat Americans because we are very particular with grammar,” said Rapes.
There are also at least 500 thousand graduates in the country every year—200 thousand of that are medical and health sciences, 180 thousand are engineering and IT graduates, and 120 thousand are business graduates.
“It is because of this mix that we are able to cater to the various outsourcing services to our global clients,” said Rapes.