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As the IT-BPO industry in the Philippines is experiencing rapid growth at 25 per cent per annum, investors have begun to see this island nation as the ‘next Asian dragon’. According to the Commission on ITC (CICT) chief Ivan John Enrile Uy, several of the major companies in the world are now operating their largest service centers in the Philippines resulting in the rapid growth of the IT-BPO industry in the country.
Quoting Uy, a recent website report says that the IT-BPO industry in the Philippines employed approximately 525,000 workforces in 2010 and had earned over $9.1 billion in terms of revenues. Uy emphasized that the objective of CICT was to reinforce the preparedness of these cities as well as the districts outside Metro Manila to emerge as favorite destinations for investors in the IT-BPO industry. According to him, this plan would help to decongest Metro Manila and, at the same time, widen the opportunities for economic growth to other regions of the country capitalizing on the plentiful and internationally competitive employees available in the Philippines. He said that currently, about 20 per cent of the country’s IT and BPO firms are located outside the core metropolitan regions of Manila and Cebu and this leaning is likely to continue. As cities outside Metro Manila are emerging as new bubs for IT and BPO industry or the Next Wave Cities, the Philippines is presently witnessing the influence of this sector on the rural communities.
Uy mentioned that the leading global research and outsourcing advisory firm Tholons has ranked Manila as fourth and Cebu as ninth in the Top 100 cities in the World for Outsourcing in its 2010 list. In addition, a number of Next Wave Cities of the country, including Davo (69); Sta. Rosa (Laguna) (88); Iloilo (98) and Bacolod (100), were included in Tholons Top 100 cities list for 2010.