Honing skills for local business to help curb export of people

MANILA, Philippines - To facilitate exporting of services rather than of people, policy interventions must be aimed at honing skills needed by local business.

This is a policy advocacy of Dr. Romeo Reyes, visiting Research Fellow of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) and Consultant of the EU-assisted Trade Related Technical Assistance Project 2 (TRTA2).

Reyes argued that the government needs to work closely with the private sector, particularly with the academe to align the skills of our graduates with the needs of local business.

This is one policy remedy that Reyes advocated to curb the export of people and facilitate the export of services.

Of the four modes of trade in services, the Philippines notably registers strong presence in mode 4, the movement of natural persons or simply the export of people.

The country has yet to exploit the three other modes, such as exporting of services via information technology (mode 1), having foreigners come to the country to avail of domestic services (mode 2) and getting multinational companies to invest in the local service sector (mode 3).

This policy imperative to match skills with local industry needs is also supported by the findings of the studies commissioned by the Philippine Services Coalition, another EU-funded undertaking, to assess the global competitiveness of the country’s services sector, such as health and wellness, maritime, education, accounting and engineering, among others.

Based on said studies, it appears that the country’s prospects for trade in services is rather far-fetched as local firms experience shortfall in the supply of qualified workers.

As cited in one of said studies, one of the major challenges faced by the accounting sector is the deterioration in English proficiency of the graduates.

The business process outsourcing (BPO), a key income-and job-generating sector, also complained about the deterioration in the quality of graduates.

While there are around 600,000 students enrolled annually in business administration and related courses, only a small fraction of these would qualify due to poor English communication skills.

A study on Philippine educational services cited that the deterioration in the quality of graduates only reflects the shortage of masterally-qualified instructors and professors and the ill-designed college programs.

Said paper underscored the need to revise the accounting program, which has 60 percent coverage on general subjects, with no courses that address BPO, no apprenticeship before taking the Certified Public Accountancy (CPA) examination, and no post-graduate program in accountancy.