STI eyes tie-up with Japanese conglomerates

CEBU CITY – The STI education services group is holding talks with 21 Japanese business conglomerates for a grant and the establishment of an information technology (IT) school in the Philippines.

The IT-based school will be located in the Philippines but all its graduates will be for exclusive recruitment by the Japanese firms. These firms, known as zaibatsus, are big business conglomerates with global reach.

Among them are Matsushita, Itochu, Mitsubishi, and Marubeni. The system is now being applied in Indonesia.

According to STI president and chief executive officer Chito B. Salazar, all the students will be trained in IT courses based on the requirements of the Japanese giants. They will also be made familiar with the Japanese language and their management and working style.

Salazar added that the same conglomerates would initiate a grant for the project amounting to an undisclosed amount. "Initially, we are talking about P100 million," he said.

"The top graduates will have first crack at high paying IT-related jobs," he added, during the national launch of e-College.

e-College is an information, communications and technology (ICT) educational institution offering on-line learning with the Global Universities Alliance (GUA) which is the world’s first consortium of universities offering globally-accepted ICT technology on-line education utilizing the Internet. Dr. Roger Posadas is the president of STI’s e-College system, the country’s first IT-based on-line academy.

The IT educational organization is also forging a joint venture with an unnamed Japanese business group that will operate an STI school in or around the US military base in Okinawa, Japan.

Aside from Japan, STI is also holding talks with companies in the People’s Republic of China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand and two other Asian nations for the establishment of an STI academy.

STI said the arrangements would either be as a master franchise in the host country or under a joint venture with the latter as the majority partner.

Meanwhile, STI chairman Eusebio Tangco said all its expansion plans from this year to 2003 would be funded from various measures including loans, bond issues, public listing, and internally-generated fund.

Tangco said that among its plans is the establishment of a "cyber city" in a 25-hectare property located in Calamba, Laguna. The IT-based "city" will have an IT-based university as the center of its operations.

"It will have several IT research centers, training facilities, dormitories, several locators, and anxilliary services. The design alone costs us P1 million," the chairman said, adding that the cyber city will start operating after 2004.

Initial estimates for its two-year expansion program excluding the cyber city is P300 million.

Target date for the initial public offering (IPO) of STI is the third quarter of next year. They are also looking into the possibility of listing at the Singapore stock exchange in the same period.

Earlier, Microsoft Corp., the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), and STI signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) in China that will align their resources in a project called e-learning in the Philippines.

Under the accord, Microsoft will provide the operating systems while PLDT will provide the electronic infrastructure. STI will provide the educational content of the e-learning project.