VIDEO:

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Speech
of
His Excellency Benigno S. Aquino III
President of the Philippines
At the 3^rd Annual International Outsourcing Summit of the Business Processing
Association of the Philippines (BPAP)

[Delivered at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza, Pasay City on October 12, 2011]

Good evening. Please sit down.

Secretaries Greg Domingo, Mario Montejo; Director General Joel Villanueva; Mr. Fred Ayala, Ms. Gillian Virata; Mr. Benedict Hernandez; and, of course, Congressman Sigfrido Tinga; BPAP/P Member Associations; distinguished members of the business community present; fellow workers in government; honored guests; ladies and gentlemen:

Good evening.

Let me first tell you that I am very happy to be speaking here today, before representatives from one of the most dynamic industries in this country: the offshoring and outsourcing industry. Yours is an industry that has given the Philippines a reputation for excellence and that promises continued growth despite the economic slowdown we have seen in some parts of the world.

I will endeavor, at this point, to deliver just good news and bad news I will keep to myself. [Laughter]

A little over a decade ago, offshoring and outsourcing operations here in the Philippines were small, with employment in the low thousands—I am told, 5,000, specifically. Since then, the industry has grown in leaps and bounds—I understand it was 540,000. Last year, the IT-BPO industry alone generated 8.9 billion dollars in revenues and employed more than half a million people. The forecast for 2011 is even more positive, with the number of full-time employees in your industry expected to increase by more than a hundred thousand, bringing the grand total to 640,000 Filipinos who will have full-time employment. This is why whenever I go abroad and tell the world that the Philippines is open for business, your industry is one of those foremost in my mind.

I do not have to tell you that the numbers I have mentioned give us good reason to be optimistic about your industry and the Philippine economy growing more in the years to come. But if there is one thing that my administration has always emphasized, it is that what we want for the Philippines is not just economic growth, but inclusive economic growth. We want a Philippines in which investments do not make a difference only in the revenue of corporations, but also, more importantly, in our minds, in the lives of our countrymen.

In a very significant way, all of you stakeholders present here today have contributed to our vision. Through the confidence you have displayed in the skill and talents of the Filipino people, the Philippines has been given a newfound prestige in the global community. And for good reason: your employees—our countrymen—do more than answer phones, they also provide services relating to accounting, engineering, legal processes, Web development applications, and many, many more.

It is because of this that the European Outsourcing Association named the Philippines as one of three finalist countries in the 2010 Most Preferred BPO Country Destinations. Tholons—I hope I am pronouncing this correctly—Incorporated also included six of our cities in the 2010 Top 100 Cities in the World for Outsourcing Report: Metro Manila, of course, Cebu, Davao, Sta. Rosa in Laguna, Iloilo, and Bacolod. Indeed, the Philippines is now a world leader in terms of jobs for BPO and shared services.

More importantly, through the confidence you have displayed in the Filipino people, you have given more than half a million of our countrymen jobs already where they earn a decent salary, where they will be given the means to provide for the needs of their families, and where they will have the chance to take stock of their own futures.

And so, I would like to thank the Business Processing Association of the Philippines—and, ultimately, all of you gathered here today—for all that it has contributed to the growth of this country and to the welfare of the Filipino people.

I know that you have already experienced great success in doing business in the Philippines, but at the same time, I also know that running a business is never easy, especially one that is so dependent on the available pool of skilled workers. And so, even as the Philippines offers a competitive advantage in having workers who are easily trained and who possess strong language skills, I know that there is more that we can do to make our workforce more competitive.

The Department of Science and Technology has put in place a number of initiatives to scale our human resource capabilities, like the Global Competitiveness Assessment Tool, or GCAT, which aims to identify potential candidates for call centers, non-voice BPOs, and IT outsourcing. As of May 2011, the government-funded pilot implementation of the program has already assessed 18,000 college students from 46 different institutions—and we hope that a good number of them, if not all of them, will begin their professional lives with one of the companies represented here today.

Our Next Wave Cities (NWC) program, another government initiative in partnership with the private sector, was also created to ensure that all skilled Filipino workers, including those living outside of our capital, are given a chance to be gainfully employed. We have already identified 35 of these Next Wave Cities outside of Metro Manila, in the hopes that you will consider them as alternative areas of investment. We have a vibrant ecosystem existing in these cities, coordinated by a multi-stakeholder group we refer to as ICT councils.

Apart from short courses to enhance English proficiency and other skills that will help job seekers to be employed, our Technical Education Skills and Development Authority (TESDA) has also allotted 20 million pesos for the free training of potential workers in your industry. Four associations under BPAP will be our partners in training workers in the contact center, software development, animation, and medical transcription sectors. I am also happy to announce to you today that I have recently approved an additional 500 million pesos, under our stimulus package, for training program to be undertaken by TESDA, in partnership with your industry.

Of course, we are hoping that the numbers promised to us, in terms of those trained [laughter] and those employed, will make us confident when we face congress next year when we ask for more funds [laughter]. We are doing all of this to match the confidence you have displayed in our country: in this way, as you have chosen to invest in the Philippines, so too are we choosing to invest in our people, to add to the arsenal of skills and qualities that they already possess in order to have a globally competitive and empowered workforce.

At the end of all of this is the knowledge that we—your companies and the Philippine government—are not just focused on short-term solutions. As we build the capacities and skills of our countrymen, we are helping them to increase their chances of being employed in good jobs for the long-term, and we are helping to ensure that they will be able to meet the needs of their employers, some of whom may be seated here today.

And as you build your companies into pillars of industry, you are also building the capacities of your employees, our countrymen. With every new employee you hire, you give them the ability to buy food and to pay their bills, to pay for the education of their children and the health care of their elderly parents, and to save money for a rainy day—in short, you are empowering them.

I am happy to see that, if the number of people gathered here is any indication, the confidence you showed in the Philippines when you first began to set up shop here has not waned and, in fact, has grown even stronger. For this, allow me to thank you once again.

I am confident that, so long as we continue to work together, we will continue to reap the benefits of this partnership, and go from success to success, even as we have already gained so much.

After all, with your help, we have become the best in the world. With your help, we are given more chances to, again, empower our people. And with your help, we are well on our way to building on the foundations of a new Philippines, one in which the skills and talents of the Filipino people are matched by the desire of companies to employ them, one in which the financial benefits of doing business trickle down from the CEOs to the humblest of employees, and one in which the private and public sectors work together to ensure lasting progress in the Philippines, for both the private enterprises and the Filipino people.

Again, thank you very much and good evening.