Human resources drive IT supremacy
WITH OVER 100,000 GRADUATES OF IT-RELATED COURSES A YEAR, THE PHILIPPINES HAS JOINED MALAYSIA AND SINGAPORE AT THE HEAD OF ASEAN TECHNOLOGY

A DATE WITH THE FUTURE The Philippines’ ICT development is largely private-sector driven.

Although the Philippines is considered a small nation among Asian giants, there is no shortage of big thinkers and ambitious projects, especially where the Arroyo administration’s economic growth programs and poverty fighting plans are concerned.
The president has anchored her economy’s growth to the mighty Information and Communications Technology sector, drawing her faith in its success from the country’s large pool of experts in the ICT field. She has even created a special ICT cabinet cluster to see through further development of the industry, and her IT and E-Commerce Council has been expanded to look into the entire ICT environment as well as commerce.
“I created the cabinet cluster to ensure swift and coordinated government action on ICT matters,” President Arroyo explains. “In formulating the new economic development strategy for the Philippines we must focus on the following: first, enhancing the country’s information infrastructure; second, creating and enabling a regulatory
environment; and third, developing human capital. For a country like the Philippines, developing the information infrastructure is critical for our future competitiveness.”

She also stressed that her administration’s ICT thrust will be private sector-driven, with the government coordinating activities and supporting the private sector with “forward-looking policies”.
Thus, moves to develop information infrastructure have been done in tandem with efforts to increase the business applications of ICT with both government support and guidance. In 1998 the current Secretary of Trade and Industry Mar Roxas initiated an e-commerce law that gave the Philippines the legal framework in which ICT businesses could thrive.
Nowadays, he his advocating amendments to the so-called Omnibus Investment Plan in order to boost
investments in the sector, with an eye on bringing to the country a share of the estimated $700 trillion that the B2B business is expected to generate by the year 2004.

“Our country is suited to this area,” Mr. Roxas points out. “This is primarily because in the IT world it is the processors and creators of information that are the sources of value and wealth. And if you have a population that is educated, English-speaking, dynamic, culturally-aware, creative, and IT- literate, then you have the number one resource necessary to be successful.”
Assistant Trade and Industry Secretary and Chief of Staff Toby Melissa C. Monsod says her department’s strategy is four-fold: to lower the cost of bandwidths in order to increase access to the countryside; inspire workers to maintain and increase their skill levels; create the legal framework in which the sector can grow; and most
importantly, to develop business.

Roberto R. Romulo Chairman of the Board, Equicom Systems Management

“The last point is really market niche. We are pushing a campaign for e-services. We started in the United States and Japan last year and are continuing throughout Europe to promote e-services. That is the main thrust of that priority,” Ms. Monsod says.
Besides Mr. Roxas, the Philippines’ main advocate of the IT revolution in the country is Roberto R. Romulo, chairman of the board at Equicom Systems Management, who also serves as a personal advisor to the president on new technology and who has been appointed to chair the regional E-ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) task force on ICT. Although he says the Philippines needs to make gains on the technology side of ICT, he sees the country taking a leading role in the sector because of its human resources.
“ASEAN is ten countries and half a billion people in various stages of IT-literacy and development. At the very top you have Singapore and Malaysia,” Mr. Romulo says. “But in the Philippines there are more than 100,000 college graduates every year. This is the kind of personnel that is required in a knowledge economy. So, Singapore and Malaysia may have the technology, but we have the human resources. On top of that, we tend to be more economic than the wages in Singapore or in Indonesia. That is the strength of the Philippines in the context of ICT.”