Cebu calling

Is Cebu fast becoming the Philippines’ next IT hub?

A report in The Freeman, The STAR’s sister publication, bared strides by two leading business groups in the Central Visayas capital to link up with Indian and Singaporean tech experts to explore opportunities for collaboration in software development and other information and communication technology (ICT) services.

Cebu business leaders belonging to the Cebu Educational Development Foundation for IT (CEDF-IT) and the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) embarked on a study tour and marketing roadshow in Bangalore and Hyderabad in India, and Singapore.

The trip, The Freeman reports, sought to "compare the directions and programs that CEDF-IT has been pursuing for the past three years with initiatives undertaken by Bangalore and Hyderabad" that have contributed to making India the premier global hub for IT and IT-enabled services.

In a phone interview with NetWorks, Francis Monera, senior vice president of Cebu Holdings Inc. and Cebu Business Month 2005 chairman, says the roadshow was also in preparation for the upcoming international Conference and Exhibition in Business and ICT (Cebu ICT) in June.

The choice itself of Cebu as the host of the conference is significant, says Monera, as it underscores the growing role of Cebu in the country’s ICT development.

In recent months, ICT growth has started to spread outside Metro Manila as IT firms, notably business process outsourcing (BPO) companies such as call centers and medical transcription services, began to explore other areas in the country to set up offices and base locations.

Premier choice

Monera says outside Luzon, Cebu is the premier choice for IT companies as salary cost in the province is 20 to 30 percent lower than in Metro Manila. There are also eight universities and 30 colleges in Cebu providing IT training and education to high school graduates who could supply the manpower needs of IT locators.

At present, the Ayala-owned Asia Town IT Park, a 24-hectare facility for IT locators, hosts big names in the IT industry such as NEC Software Phils., Tsuneshi, e-Telecare and People Support. These are on top of other IT locators such as Dashk Engineering, Lexman and Bigfoot at the 50-hectare Cebu Business Park, which the Ayala Group also owns.

A cursory glance at the Classified Ads section of Cebu’s three leading dailies on a Sunday, indeed, shows more job openings for medical indexers, software engineers, hardware design engineers, applications programmers, database administrators, communica-tion trainers and technical support staff.

However, Cebu and the Philippines in general can actually offer much more than these. The Board of Investments (BOI), in its website, lists other areas in the ICT arena where the country can excel, including content development, animation, conversion and localization of data, data search, integration and analysis, distance education and website services.

In this aspect, Monera says the support of the academe is crucial in bringing the level of IT education at par with that of other countries.

He says the Indian IT schools which the CEDF-IT and CCCI members visited last month such as the Indian School of Business, the Indian Institute of Information Technology-Bangalore and the International Institute of Information Technology, have strong linkages with the other sectors of Indian society, the goal of which is to produce graduates who can work in IT firms that have set up shop in the so-called Silicon Valley of the East.

IT curriculum

In Cebu, he says, this is already taking root. In fact, the 10-man team which went to India and Singapore was composed of five representatives from the business sector and the rest from the academe.

"The goal here is not for the industry to dictate to the academe the kind of curriculum which they think will respond to their manpower requirements at the moment, but for these two sectors to collaborate on improving IT education in general, not only for today but for tomorrow," Monera says.

While in India, the group visited 19 IT organizations, key academic insti-tutions and government agencies to forge strategic alliances and gather support for the forthcoming Cebu ICT 2005.

Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), himself vowed to attend the conference.

Monera notes that NASSCOM, an umbrella organization of software firms in India, has helped in a big way in bringing India to its current status as the world’s outsourcing haven for IT and IT-enabled services.

"We realized more clearly that there is absolutely nothing that we Filipinos cannot replicate, if not altogether do much better in. In fact, we felt that most of our interventions in CEDF-IT had been validated, and a few could be better enhanced," Bonifacio Belen, CEDF-IT executive director, was quoted as saying in The Freeman.

Job creation

Monera stresses that developing Cebu’s IT environment will create jobs not only for Cebuanos but for those in the entire Central Visayas, among other benefits.

Cebu ICT though, he says, is only one of the highlights of CBM 2005 slated in June.

"The Cebu Business Month is a business festival held every year by the (local) business community to promote the province as a business destination. We seek to achieve the prominence enjoyed by the Sinulog festival in the field of arts and culture," Monera says.

CBM 2005 will play up three themes this year – tourism, information and communications technology, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

For ICT, Monera says the support of the country’s major IT organizations and the government itself has already been secured. In fact, no less than Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia and Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña will attend the kick-off of Cebu ICT. The American and European chambers of commerce have also committed their participation in the event.

"This is no longer just about Cebu offering its services to the world but more on the Philippines gearing up for global play," Monera says.