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Thursday, August 11, 2005
Ng: Only the good news
By Wilson Ng
Wired Desktop
I am currently attending the Sun.Star Economic Forum as I write this and I would particularly want to just share some of the figures that impressed me. At any rate, I am sure the other facts are more than adequately covered by my other colleagues in Sun.Star.
Two sets of statistics stand out quite well—one on tourism, the other on trade.
There were more than one million domestic and foreign tourists who visited Cebu in 2004, and more than 15 percent of foreign tourists in the country come to our island. In trade, Cebu’s exports grew more than 20 percent last year.
Computer statistics delivered by Napoleon Nazareno, president and CEO of PLDT and Smart Communications, impressed me as well. Incidentally, he is also a Cebuano, and graduated from the University of San Carlos with a degree in mechanical engineering.
According to him, the contact center in the country is projected to grow to over 80,000 seats by end of 2005, as it currently contributes almost a billion dollars in revenues from below $200 million in 2001.
The exports of medical transcription also grew from $40 million to $483 million in 2004, while those of animation services grew from $21 million to $40 million.
But what is particularly encouraging is the prediction of various research agencies that the Philippines will become a main player as the world becomes more reliant on business outsourcing. In fact, XMG predicts that the Philippines will surpass India by 2008, to become the home of the world’s largest call center industry (we lag at third from India in this industry) and is expected to generate at least $3 billion in revenues before 2010.
Here’s some good news for the local IT front: The Bureau of Internal Revenue’s electronic filing and payment system (eFPS) project won the top prize in the recently concluded Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Asia-Pacific Digital Opportunity Center (APEC-ADOC) Awards held in Taiwan, as reported by Inq7.net
The APEC-ADOC Award recognizes the best e-practices for the advancement of emerging digital technologies and applications such as, e-government and e-commerce and their benefits to communities and society as a whole.
I posted this winning in a local forum, and people responded. People, in general, believe that the Filipino is capable of really excelling if we don’t quarrel too much, and become organized under a no-nonsense chief executive.
Incidentally, talking of working together, we are putting up a new community blog called CeBu CeBoom CeBlog. This is composed of volunteers who will do one thing - report and talk about the vibrancy, hospitality and other nice things in Cebu. The web is composed of personal pictures or testimonies of people in Cebu about events, parties, restaurants, and nice places to visit.
I kidded my colleague at Sun.Star about it, that while the news media are mandated to report on every important event, the blog site enjoys the luxury to select only the good news.
At any rate, we are looking forward to more people visiting and posting their great experiences about being in Cebu. The blog site can be accessed at www.cebu.ngkhai.net
(August 11, 2005 issue)
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