PRESIDENT GLORIA MACAPAGAL ARROYO’S SPEECH
DURING THE CYBER CORRIDOR VISAYAN TOUR:
VISIT TO TELEPERFORMANCE BACOLOD CITY
Luxur IT Center, Lacson St. cor. Magsaysay Ave.
Bacolod City, Negros Occidental
February 3, 2010
02032010C
Thank you very much Secretary Chua, our outsourcing czar.
Thank you very much Mayor Leonardia and Governor Zayco for your warm words of welcome. I’d like to also greet Congressman Monico Puentevella, our host congressman and Congressman Ignacito Arroyo of Negros Occidental.
I’d like to congratulate Attorney Sigue and the leaders of the ICT industry here in Bacolod, and of course, thank you to Teleperformance for hosting this occasion that I asked to be held. (applause)
I still can’t forget in 2006, I was here in the ballroom of this hotel for the Vice Mayors’ League Convention and I said, “this is our last event in this place as a ballroom because tomorrow it will be transformed into a call center.” And after we left, Teleperformance stepped in and here they are stronger than ever. Congratulations! (applause)
And so it's fitting that we should be here today as part of a tour of the Super Regions: Agribusiness Mindanao, Tourism Central Philippines which Negros is also a part of Bacolod, the North Luzon Agribusiness Quadrangle, the Urban Luzon Beltway and the Cyber Corridor which we are featuring today. These Super Regions were designed to spread development away from an inequitable concentration in Manila.
I understand that some from the media would like to know how do they become a part of the Cyber Corridor. Well, let me answer in this way, the Cyber Corridor was identified jointly by the private sector, the academe and the government. And these elements or parts of the Cyber Corridor where the areas that they identified as comprising the strongest actual and potential locations for ICT investments like call centers, back office, software development, medical transcription, engineering design, animation and game development.
As we have heard glimpses earlier, certainly, the Cyber Corridor includes Metro Manila and Metro Cebu, because they were the two original ICT Centers of Excellence in our country. But now, they have included also 10 urban areas being promoted as the best new destinations for ICT: Metro Laguna, Metro Cavite, Iloilo, Davao, Bacolod, Metro Pampanga, Metro Bulacan, Cagayan de Oro, Central Bulacan and Lipa. Well, being already talked about some of the contents of the brochure on the Cyber Corridor and congratulations for being number one in business environment. (applause) I’m also told by the industry that Bacolod’s best assets are its people, (applause) you the people and your progressive mindset that spills over to the BPO employees who come from different parts of the region to live and work in Bacolod. Also another very important element is the infrastructure.
During our administration we completed the Bacolod-Silay Airport and we are beginning the Bacolod-Silay access road, but that airport according to the industry certainly boosted Bacolod’s potential as an IT hub. With such infrastructure now, Bacolod offers a conducive climate for ICT investments, and we have heard about the different IT-BPO companies in the area, the biggest number of IT parks outside of Cebu and Metro Manila. And we have giant investors here like Teletech, Convergys and of course our host Teleperformance. (applause)
ICT, BPO and the Cyber industry have come a long way since 2001. The Philippines itself has come a long way since January 2001. Many don’t remember much about the tumultuous time less than ten years ago when the nation was teetering on the brink of political chaos and financial bankruptcy. The economy was jammed in reverse, few investments were being made, few jobs were being created. The debt of the government and its corporations of 3.6 trillion pesos was bigger than our GDP of 3.3 trillion pesos. There were almost no foreign reserves.
It was a time of lower salaries and higher prices. Tax revenues were so low that we could hardly invest in expanding healthcare, improving education, and providing clean water and needed electricity to remote barangays.
Into this dismal picture we stepped. I did not seek the Office of the President in 2001; it was thrust upon me. But rather than shirk from this onerous task, we rolled up our sleeves, determined to turn the Philippines around.
We were focused like a laser beam on delivering real results to better the lives of ordinary Filipinos. As an economist, I knew that to reverse years of economic decline we had to instill fiscal discipline, grow the economy and invest in human and physical infrastructure.
These actions would form the building blocks of a turnaround that would deliver an unprecedented 36 quarters of uninterrupted growth, create 9 million new jobs, add 53 million people to healthcare, with government coffers that helped us withstand the global economic crisis.
In my first State of the Nation in 2001, I said that we would create wealth by developing labor-intensive, skills-intensive services such as ICT. And sure enough from scratch with only 2,000 workers in the year 2000, we created what is today a global powerhouse: the Philippine BPO industry. We achieved this by promoting strategic investments in three areas:
First, digital infrastructure. We encouraged more broadband services in cities and identified growth areas. Thus the cost of international calls went down from 40 cents to 2 cents a minute for those using the VOiP. The number of internet users jumped from 2 million in 2000 to more than 24 million today. That is why we have an infrastructure for BPO.
And so that no Taiwan tremor or tsunami can cut off our cyber services from their global clients, we encouraged PLDT and Globe to invest billions in having more than one international telecommunications gateway into our country.
Second area of investment was an appropriate policy and legal environment. We created the Commission on ICT. Rey Chua, our chairman, has been guided by the policy that the ICT sector should be guided by the market, with minimal government interference. For example, if the market calls for call centers, we shouldn't force our investors to specialize in something else. Let them make the decision. Instead of regulating, we gave incentives to the developers of IT parks like the ones that are here in Bacolod, we assisted investors in identifying promising provincial sites that’s why we designed the Cyber Corridor, and we built more transport facilities to those sites like the Bacolod-Silay Airport.
Also because, of course, ICT is more than call centers and the other side of the spectrum we have the IT. Yesterday, we opened an IT Center in Taguig in Metro Manila. And the Chairman said that one of the reasons why they decided to come to the Philippines after he met me in 2007 and learned of the possibility of doing IT in the Philippines, he was convinced by our very good Intellectual Property Protection environment.
So, that’s what we mean by supportive rather than regulating. And this philosophy drove the fast growth of call centers. But now the market is leading to the growth of the higher value added segments of the offshoring and outsourcing industries, such as accounting, legal, medical, personnel and administrative services.
Third area of investment, human capital. To increase the country’s share in the global market for offshoring and outsourcing services, the government intensified the implementation of various programs to train the workforce to enable them to find jobs in the BPO sector, and educate the young on the use of computers and internet for the next generation of IT and BPO workers. More than 4,000 public schools are now connected to the internet, including 22 schools in Bacolod.
In technical education and skills development training, we have invested three times as much as the combined budgets of the three previous administrations. A very large portion of this investment goes to scholarships for the BPO industry, including 3,000 scholarships here in Region VI.
Thanks to these strategic investments, billions in investments have been poured into the country by the private sector creating half a million new jobs in BPO alone.
Today, the Philippines with 90 million people has challenged India’s one billion population for BPO supremacy. Compared to almost nothing in 2001, 0.02 billion dollars, our BPO industry in 2009 earned more than 7 billion dollars. (applause)
I’d like to think that the 500,000 jobs we are creating in ICT are part of the legacy that I will leave, that is the legacy of hard work, a strong and stable economy, renewed global engagement, major investments in healthcare and education, and dramatic improvements in physical infrastructure like the Bacolod-Silay Road, the Bacolod–Silay Airport, the RORO ports and other important infrastructure. Much work remains to be done, but I am determined to turn over to a new government a New Philippines ready for the challenge of bringing the nation to the verge of first world in 20 years.
And what other precursor of the first world we see in the Philippines than more than the BPO industry especially here where we are today. This is the only BPO center I know that has a swimming pool. (laughter/applause) So this is an industry that will continue to grow and grow. It is an industry that with all of your support and your active participation will really lead us to the verge of first world in 20 years.
Damo gid nga salamat sa inyo nga tanan! (applause)
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