Govt readies trade show to support IT/BPO firms

The Department of Trade and Industry is providing a range of support to Philippine technology companies through e-Services Philippines to be held on 15-16 February 2007, the country’s most comprehensive ICT event attracting an audience all over the Philippines and the world.

e-Services Philippines will highlight this year conference tracks on all e-services sectors in the Philippines, namely animation, business process outsourcing, contact centers, medical transcription, and design and engineering. The event will also have a high-level CEO forum on the following key topics: Southeast Asia as outsourcing location of choice for global companies; Urban myths in outsourcing; Privacy and Security Issues; Keys to successful outsourcing; Knowledge Process Outsourcing and Labor arbitrage in Asia.

“e-Services Philippines is the biggest Philippine IT event and the government wants to maxmize the opportunity by facilitating the visit to Manila of international buyers and introducing them to Philippine ICT companies interested in doing business in their markets,” said Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Favila. “The event provides an excellent forum for international business matching.”

In a bid to attract overseas attendance to e-Services Philippines 2007 and at the same time invite potential locators to the Philippines, the Department of Trade and Industry, Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM), and the Board of Investments (BOI) are embarking on trade missions to the United States and Europe this September.

“Basically, we want to strengthen our links with our counterpart trade associations in the United States and Europe and of course invite them to partner with Philippine IT/BPO companies,” added Favila.

The trade mission to Europe is scheduled on 13-20 September while the mission to the United States will be on 25 September-6 October.

This year, e-Services Philippines generated 20.7 million dollars and attracted 1,678 local and foreign visitors, including foreign trade delegations from Japan, Sweden, and the United States as well as members of C-Level Organization.

The central focus of e-Services Philippines is the networking meetings where international visitor, industry associations and Philippine IT/BPO companies networked and talked business. The United Kingdom’s National Outsourcing Association (NOA), ICT Office Netherlands and the National Association of Software Service Companies (NASSCOM) attended e-Services Philippines 2006.

The Philippines is presently a leading destination of critical offshore work. It has 405, 000 college graduates every year who are highly skilled and English-proficient. The Swiss International Institute for Management Development rates the Philippines among the 60 countries in the Asia Pacific as #1 in available skilled workers, #3 in available senior managers, #10 in available accounting and financial skills, and #12 in qualified engineers. Some of the recent global companies who located their offshore work to the Philippines are Dell and Logica.

For several decades, the Philippines has been Southeast Asia’s hub for shared services and outsourcing not just in IT services & support, back office processing, human resource, customer service and call centers, but moreso in specific industries or verticals like healthcare, energy, and finance industries.

World leaders in business consulting like PriceWaterhouse Coopers, KPMG Consultancy, Deloitte Touche, Tohmatsu, and Ernst and Young are also represented in the Philippines.

Overall, global research and consulting firm Meta Group ranks the Philippines as number four worldwide in terms of availability of knowledge workers. The country is also thr third largest English-speaking nation in the world outside the United States and the United Kingdom. Filipinos are also highly trainable and technically capable within 6 to 8 weeks. They are also ranked with the second-lowest hourly wage for offshoring professionals, at 13 percent of the US level. Recent studies point to the Philippines as a favorable source of engineering graduates qualified to work with multinationals. Leading global brands such as Caltex, Procter & Gamble and AIG are among the firms that have located their backroom operations for shared financial services here.