Government prioritizes five areas of IT outsourcing

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has prioritized the promotion of five areas of information technology outsourcing, namely call service centers, software development, animation, medical transcription and business process outsourcing, DTI Secretary Manuel Roxas II disclosed yesterday.

"These are the areas where there is great demand from the outside and where the Philippines has a distinct, and apparent comparative advantage," Roxas said.

He said the DTI is coordinating with the National Statistics Office (NSO) to incorporate the five priority areas as a separate industry. At present, they are lumped up under the services sector, making it hard for the government to distinguish it from other services such as insurance, banking and financial services.

By separating and classifying them as a separate industry, Roxas said the government will be able to give those areas better promotion, access to financing and even in education.

The country is emerging as the call center capital of the world, the DTI noted.

The Philippines is also now a strong contender for the top slot in outsourced software development services.

In animation, the DTI noted a dramatic surge in the popularity of animation over the last decade, driving worldwide demand for outsourced Filipino animation talent delivered in real time through the Web.

At the same time, the DTI also noted that Filipino IT outsourcing services are cashing in on the booming medical transcription (MT) business in the US which is now worth $10 billion to $25 billion annually, according to the US Medical Transcription Industry Alliance in the US.

The trade department also pointed out that back-office processes such as human resource management, accounting, purchasing and inventory control are now increasingly outsourced by large foreign companies to cheaper yet high-quality offshore location such the Philippines in response to global competition and the current global recession.