Cebu at the IT Expo in Hongkong!

Hongkong: I’ve been in this former Crown Colony since the evening of Easter Sunday to attend the Hongkong Trade Development Council’s (HKTDC) International ICT (Information, Communication Technology) Expo at the Hongkong Convention & Exhibition Centre. Call it an added bonus that just beside our convention floor there’s the Hongkong Electronics Fair (Spring Edition), which brings (there’s 2,500 booths to visit) together the worlds’ leading information technology suppliers and software applications and developers and above us is a Lighting Exhibition in Hall no.7 that displays the various lighting systems available in the market today.

We’re helping man the booth of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (CCCI), not just to meet up with potential investors to Cebu, but also to promote the C.E.B.U. ICT 2009 International Conference & Exhibit that brings together all industry stakeholders in Cebu on June 25-27th which is part of the Cebu Business month, hosted by the CCCI.

Just going around the huge convention floor where I.T. Industry players are displaying their booths teaches me that this is what Global Competition is really all about. Everything that has to do with the I.T. Industry is here, like the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council of India or the government booths of Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Japan and New Zealand and many booths from China, like the Guangzhou-China Service Outsourcing Pilot City. Almost all the major players come from China!

Even Inner Mongolia is here. Of course, the Philippines are represented by the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA) and the Business Process Outsourcing Association of the Philippine (BPOAP) and the CCCI. Even schools have booths here like the Chinese University in Hongkong and the Hongkong School of Nursing Polytechnic University who are promoting a Centre for Integrated Digital Health. Indeed the I.T. Industry is the road to the future and if the Philippines want to be a major player in this field, we should exert extra effort to join the I.T. bandwagon!

Incidentally those who’ve joined past or previous expos told me that it’s a bit slower this year, thanks to the global financial crisis. But in truth, the convention hall was teeming with people, looking for the right connection or prospects for business partnerships. Visibly missing are American I.T. companies, who are perhaps still wallowing from their financial troubles. But this expo proves that the Asians would rather look for other markets, rather than wallow on the loss of the US market, even if it is Asia’s biggest market.

We did get a lot of inquiries about Cebu, after all, we are now very much on the radar screen as far as the I.T. Industry is concerned… though admittedly, we’re relatively new in this game as Mr. Boni Belen of the I.T. Industry told me…that Cebu only joined the I.T. Industry in the year 2001 when we held the 1st Cebu ICT Summit.

But in those short 7-years, Tholons, a leading full-service Strategic Advisory firm for Global Outsourcing and Investments revealed that Cebu ranked among the top five (5) emerging Outsourcing destinations for global companies. Cebu came in fourth (4) behind the Indian cities of Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai for the year 2007. However, I just learned that Tholons has now put Cebu as the number one in their list as of October 2008!

Of course, Tholons couldn’t deny the existence of some thirty (30) BPO and Call Center Companies like Convergys, TeleTech and many others and even today, there is still a huge demand for voice-based services even from companies from India (which is fast losing ground vs. Cebu) and China which is largely a data based BPO, but zero on voice-based services. This is probably why we are getting so many inquiries from Indian and Chinese I.T. companies who obviously want to know what’s in Cebu that they don’t have?

I also met a lot of Filipinos who are working in Hongkong who attended the convention, including Trade Assistant Carmela P. Panes from the Philippine Consulate and naturally we chatted mostly about the recent incident written by that unknown writer from an unknown Hongkong Magazine, Mr. Chip Tsao about Filipinos being a “Nation of Servants”. I can still feel the indignation against Chip Tsao, but I have taken a similar stand as that of our fellow Star columnist F. Sionil Jose who pointed out that we should not shoot the messenger, but instead refocus that outcry against those who turned Filipinos into servants and maids in foreign countries.

Indeed, we should focus our indignation against those politicians who think that the national coffers are their private bank account! Education gets the biggest pie in the national budget, yet we still have too many Filipinos sent to Hongkong and many other countries to work as servants.

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow entitled, “Straight from the Sky” shown every Monday only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 on SkyCable at 8:00 in the evening.