Services exporters urged to upgrade and innovate

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine services exporters eyeing to penetrate new markets are encouraged to upgrade and innovate to boost their competitiveness and gain advantage against the world’s best competitors.

“Services exporters do international business differently,” said Jane Drake-Brockman, senior services adviser at International Trade Centre (ITC), during a national workshop on services.

Brockman said economic upgrading involves improving the efficiency of the production processes, adding new product lines that are of higher value-added and increasing value addition by moving up the value chain.

She said the process also entails switching to a different sector which final products are more technologically sophisticated and of higher-value added.

“Upgrading is not easy, yet it is happening everywhere and is driven fundamentally by national level competitiveness policy changes (border and within-border), and investments in physical and human capital,” she noted.

Brockman said the Philippine services sector must also increasingly improve productivity through innovation.

“Services exporters tend to be project-based,” she added. “Each export project tends to require a slightly different services offering; this means services firms can rarely find new export markets without innovating; they need to promote their capacity to create new services offerings for new international clients.”

Further, Brockman underscored the need to promote and facilitate Philippine services capability globally and regionally through improving “branding.”

She said it is also imperative to increase the availability and expertise of services skills to ensure that the country is positioned to take advantage of regional and global business opportunities.