Local service companies urged to chase contracts abroad

A Filipino health services company based in a hospital in the United States deploys health professionals from hospital administrators to nurses and ward attendants. Another company based in Hong Kong or Riyadh provides household management services to households in high-rise residential condominiums or exclusive villages. Another can offer to provide the manpower of one whole electronics factory in Taipei.

Is this just a pipe dream? Or can it be done?

Although the practice is yet to get popular acceptance here, a growing number of companies are leading the way to that direction, says Fe Palileo, chief executive officer of Manpower Outstanding Services Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Manpower Inc., USA, world leader in the staffing industry providing workforce management services and solutions to customers.

In an exclusive interview with the Philexport News and Features, Palileo said there are less than a dozen staff services firms in the Philippines today, of which her company is one of the leaders that are providing professional temporary staffs to the community of transnational companies with operations here.

Her firm is on top of the race to provide professional staff to local and international telephone calling centers of which the Philippines is moving neck to neck with India in the bid to become the calling center capital of Asia. It is strongest at providing office employees from secretaries to accountants and clerks, information technology professionals and industrial workers to 36 of the biggest companies in Metro Manila and the Calabarzon industrial enclave.

One thing unique about this business is its clientele firms. All of them transnational companies that are very keen at keeping themselves at par with the best anywhere in the world. The home-grown companies, Palileo says, are not yet in step with the latest trend.

They have been too used to outsourcing from agencies workings that need unskilled labor like building maintenance, security services and the like which, in many cases, are prone to the violation of labor standards at the expense of the workers.

In the case of the new players, they now supply top rate professionals with competitive pay scales. Although the industry is still small in the general pattern of employment where full-time, supposedly lifetime employment is considered, it is filling up an employment vacuum that is turning wider as companies keep themselves in contention in a globalizing business atmosphere.

Manpower is only in its third year as a transnational company after joining Manpower Inc. of the United States in May 2000. Before that, it was a fully Filipino-owned company known as Prime Manpower Resources Development, Inc., owned and operated by its present chief executive for 21 years. With the tie-up, the corporation now operates in 61 countries worldwide, nine of them in Asia.

The local unit handles the deployment of what Palileo calls "temps" to domestic clients. The international unit, on the other hand, deploys Filipino professionals and highly skilled technical workers in other parts of the world like the 400 aircraft mechanics now keeping the aircraft of the Royal Saudi Air Force in flying condition.

The idea of Filipino service companies or those with foreign partners like Manpower, manned by Filipinos, can now enjoy commercial presence in other countries under World Trade Organization’s (WTO) four modes of service exports. Only a few firms like banks, insurance companies and sometimes, construction firms like the Engineering Equipment Corp. and developers like the PNOC-Energy Development Corporation and, of course, Manpower, are into it.

Another option, like the establishment of international call centers in the Philippines, or auditing or animation services which are done here but their end-products are transmitted electronically abroad, is another mode of export the locals can fully take advantage of.

With the exception of retail, banking and insurance, services in the Philippines are largely reserved by the Philippine Constitution for Filipino professionals.

This is a handicap that ties the hands of government negotiators in the on-going talks on trade in services under the WTO. Under the rules of the international trade watchdog, a country can only demand for the same treatment in another country if it offers the same treatment to its trading partners.

Palileo hopes that somehow, Philippine officials will find ways of striking a win-win arrangement for the country to take full advantage of the remaining field a good winning chance in foreign lands – the services sector. – Abe P. Belena, Philexport News and Features