The Philippine Information Technology-Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) sector aims to lead in four more fast growth areas worldwide: Healthcare Information Management Outsourcing, Finance and Accounting Outsourcing, HR Outsourcing and Creative Process Outsourcing.
The Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO) of the Department of Science and Technology (DoST) and the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) made the pronouncement yesterday.
Recently, the country overtook India as the call center capital of the world, and in 2011 the IT-BPO industry contributed approximately $11 billion in export revenues, about 640,000 direct jobs and approximately 1.5 million indirect jobs (e.g. construction and service jobs generated to serve the sector’s growth) to the Philippine Economy.
According to ICTO Deputy Executive Director Alejandro Melchor, “We are the world’s number one call center provider and we intend to attain market leadership in the UK and Australia as well.”
“With our new development programs for the IT-BPO Industry we also intend to position the Philippine as the world leader in Healthcare Information Management Outsourcing, Finance and Accounting Outsourcing, HR Outsourcing, and creative Process Outsourcing,” she reiterated.
“Our third goal is to double our market share by 2016 in Information Technology Outsourcing, Engineering Services Outsourcing and Multilingual BPO.”
The IT-BPO industry estimates that its revenues were equivalent to approximately 5% of the country’s GDP in 2011 and expects this to reach 8.6% by 2016.
“We are expecting BPO not only to contribute significantly to the GDP in the next five years, it most significant impact would be on employment,” according to ICTO Executive Director Louis Casambre.
“ICTO is on the frontline of DoST’s BPO initiatives, our programs are not limited to that of the industry but also improving the quality of our graduates and improve their chances of landing jobs not only in the BPO sector but in other industries as well,” he elaborated.
Industry leaders are equally optimistic about the general outlook for the IT-BPO industry.
“We believe that we can generate $25 billion in export revenue, 1.3 billion in direct jobs and over 3 million indirect jobs by 2016,” announced BPAP Chairman Alfredo Ayala. “But that is, only if industry can further step up its partnership with government. The initiatives announced by DoST-ICTO are a major step in that direction.

Source: Manila Bulletin - February 2, 2012