Without Borders

WE totally agree with the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) that the country’s future depends on its urban areas. But we would like to add a little phrase to that line—only if the cities articulate well with the countryside.

Only if the farms are thoughtfully integrated into a well-defined hierarchy of urban systems that nurtures, instead of suppresses, the hinterlands’ development potentials. And only if the policy environment supports that kind of a growth strategy through infrastructure development and a competitive, if not totally deregulated, transport systems. Sad to say, we don’t have such right now.

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CHANGING BPO LANDSCAPE
CALL CENTERS ARE STILL A HOT SOURCE FOR LOCAL JOBS
BUT OTHER BPO SERVICES ARE ON THE RISE

By David Llorito, Debbie Pepito & Louise Francisco
Research Staff, BusinessMirror, September 27, 2006

The country’s cyberservices industry appears to be undergoing a transformation. According to BusinessMirror’s Job Ad Index in August, not only is the much-ballyhooed sector getting bigger, it is also expanding into other business activities that may soon blur the difference among the different types of outsourcing services.

For August, BusinessMirror’s Jobs Ads Index rose 18 percentage points from its base in June, driven largely by the continuing demand for workers in cyberservices, construction and engineering, manufacturing, and hotels, restaurants and resorts. For the month, total job ads reached 31,177, about 30 percent of which came from the cyberservices sector. In June, the base on which the index is computed, total job ads reached only 26,216, yet even then cyberservices already accounted for a third of the want ads.

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Old story, new script.

IN the first half of the year, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), the value of goods and services produced and traded within the country’s borders, grew by 5.6 percent. The story here is that the Philippine economy remains resilient despite the crippling global prices of crude oil, and has proven capable of staying within the 5-6 percent growth rate band since the last 10 quarters.

The script has slightly changed: from the call centers and telecommunications, the upward push came largely from the farms. That’s encouraging because a farm-based growth is a propeople and propoor growth.

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THAT we need investments, both foreign and local, is not the issue in the debate about fiscal incentives in the Philippines. We have been stressing that the Philippines needs everybody’s help, including those of foreign and local investors, to develop this country. Whether or not fiscal incentives are the best way to achieve them, however, is the real question. Our position has been consistent and clear enough—that there are better and effective ways to promote investments other than fiscal incentives. The Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI), for one, has made a good case of the more important tack of lowering the cost of doing business than, say, haphazardly giving income-tax holidays.

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