THE Bacolod-Negros Occidental Federation for Information and Communications Technology (Bnefit) is supporting the continued granting of applicable incentives to qualified information technology-business process management (IT-BPM) companies under all the pertinent existing and future tax incentive policies of the Philippines while retaining the option to allow their workers to work from home or remotely, or to work in their respective company premises, subject to lawful terms and conditions.
"We appeal to the Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB) to mainstream remote-work arrangements and recall its Resolution No, 19-21 which allowed IT-BPM firms in economic zones to implement work-from-home (WFH) arrangements for 90 percent of their workforce only until March 31, 2022 thereby requiring their entire workforce to return to office by April 1, 2022," the federation said in a statement Wednesday, March 16.
This FIRB action may cause negative impact on the goal of the country to embrace a digital economy as part of the overarching goal of economies around the world to embrace digital transformation that fully embraces remote employment or work from home or offsite arrangements especially for information and communications technology (ICT)-driven jobs, it added.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) states that cities, societies and communities are increasingly influenced by the evolution of technology and are building ecosystems in a smart way.
For Bnefit, this means being digitally inclusive and accessible for all people and empowering everyone through information and communication technologies regardless of their gender, age, ability or their context of use.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 is marked with business models where workers work and collaborate in teams of varying competencies from remote points around the world in different time zones.
Also, it said, ICTs have seamlessly allowed professionals around the world to collaborate regardless of their locations and deliver clear, timely and measurable results.
"The top economies in the world today have fully integrated remote employment or work from home arrangements even prior to the Covid-19 pandemic to increase productivity and creativity of workers and to lessen their burden of having to commute to work and other inconvenience," the federation stressed.
Bnefit underscored that the country's IT-BPM industry proved to be among the most resilient industries during the pandemic and has even marked a steady increase in terms of revenues, employment generation, and investment attractions.
Even before the pandemic, the IT-BPM industry has continuously increased jobs and improved the economic conditions not only in Metro Manila but in the countryside, among various provinces around the country, the local ICT group said.
"To remove the work from home option will be damaging to our economy as we are still struggling to recover from the damaging impact of the pandemic and are constantly competing with other IT-BPM locations around the world," it said.
It stressed that, "with the growing prices of fuel, we are concerned about the flight of our Filipino workers who wish to excel in the digital profession but will be forced to spend time and money to commute to work regularly, instead of spending all their precious hours earning decent income."
This strategy will greatly contribute to sustaining the global lead of the Philippine IT-BPM industry and will definitely also drive connectivity to residential and remote areas as demand increases, Bnefit said.
"We appeal to the Philippine government to continue in its journey towards digital transformation and innovation and not regress," it said, adding that "the Philippines is clearly on its way towards rising as an economic tiger of Asia and we believe just like the world believes that the future is digital."