LEADERS of the Philippine outsourcing industry lauded the efforts of Bacolod-Negros Occidental Federation for Information and Communications Technology (Bnefit) for making Bacolod one of the “Ten Next Wave Cities (NWC)” in the information technology-business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry.

The same recognition was also given to local stakeholders from Iloilo and the other NWC's during the kick-off Monday of Convergence 2009, a nationwide Cyber Corridor road show of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) and the talent caravan of the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP).

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Bacolod City Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, along with members of Bnefit, represented Bacolod in the national videoconferencing at Teletech Monday morning to kick off Convergence 2009 in Quezon City.

Speakers during the Convergence 2009, which banners the theme “Empowering the Filipino through ICT,” urged the next wave cities in the outsourcing and off-shoring (O&O) industry to benchmark beyond their neighboring cities and instead compete with cities in Singapore, India, Malaysia and the rest of the world.

There are already 370,000 workers in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector generating a total revenue of $6 US billion as of 2008 and is set to grow by 20 percent by end of this year, CICT Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III said.

In Bacolod, the current number is about 5,000 employees and will eventually increase also by 20 percent or a thousand more workers as demand grows before the year ends with the entry of new players, Batapa-Sigue said.

Economic resiliency marks the growth of the ICT and BPO industry in the Philippines because of the talent supply, the quality of processes and the reasonable costs of setting up a business in the country, said Tholons chairman and CEO Avinash Vashistha.

As part of her presentation, Batapa-Sigue highlighted the incorporation of Bnefit with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a non-stock, non-profit multi-stakeholder organization to involve all the stakeholders from the industry, academe and government and private/business sectors and the creation of a website named www.bnefit.org to link all the IT-BPO practitioners in Bacolod and Negros Occidental and provide accessible information to investors.

She cited the active participation of Bacolod in all the initiatives of the National ICT Conference of the Philippines, a confederation of IT Councils all over the Philippine as initiated by the CICT.

Overall, the alderman underscored the dynamic programs of her committee and Bnefit to encourage the creation of 13 IT parks accredited by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza), seven of which were already presidentially-proclaimed and occupied by players in the industry such as TeleTech, Teleperformance, Convergys, Focus Pacific Communications, Telequest BPO, and Next Level IT Teleservices.

Recently, the Bacolod City Council has endorsed to Peza the application of Lopue’s South Square as an IT zone and to be known as Transcom Bacolod Center.

The celebration of the National ICT Month in Bacolod with the theme “English: Your Key to Global Competitiveness” was capped by the training of some 50 English teachers from various Bacolod public schools on the standards of English in the IT-BPO sector. Speakers included Batapa-Sigue, Paul Felton and Maria Talastas of Teleperformance and Ian Malayang and Junie Magnaye of Convergys.