The information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) sector looks to boost revenue at least 10 percent more this year than last year to $35.9 billion despite rising costs and competition from rival host countries like Poland and India.
This is roughly as much money remitted by millions of overseas Filipinos just last year totaling $36.12 billion .
The industry reported revenues of only $32.5 billion in 2022 but looks forward to boosting its workforce this year to 1.7 million full time employees on the basis of the optimism of 83 percent of their members expecting accelerated growth.
“Based on Roadmap 2028, the Philippine IT-BPM industry can reach 1.7 million FTEs and $35.9 billion in revenue in 2023. Separately, in a survey carried out by IBPAP, it was shown that 83 percent of IT-BPM companies are expecting to post growth in 2023 despite a potential global recession, while 17 percent remained neutral with their forecasts. Results also showed that organizations will continue to outsource and use global business services this year as a lever to drive some of their cost optimization initiatives,” industry leaders said in a statement.
The intermediate goal is to lift the FTE to a 2.5-million workforce over five years and generate revenue of $59 billion by 2028, Jack Madrid, IBPAP president and CEO said.
“We still have a long way to go, but Philippine IT-BPM’s stellar performance in 2022 brings us closer to generating 1.1 million new jobs for Filipinos. It’s also a testament to the collective efforts that the private sector, government, and academe have exerted to retain the industry as an indispensable pillar of the economy,” he added.
According to him, the projected boost in revenue and headcount may be traced to growth in banking, financial services and insurance, healthcare, retail, technology and telecommunications.
Madrid also said the industry remain a significant pillar of the economy having actually accounted for 48 percent of total take up in office space demand in 2022, representing an 81 percent improvement from take-up of only 257,000 square meters to 466,000 square meters.
Significant IT-BPM growth rates were posted in Cebu, Davao, Bacolod, Pampanga and Laguna that collectively accounted for the 17 percent rise in job generation in the countryside equal to 70,000 new jobs just last year.
Madrid said the outlook is bullish in the years ahead as IT-BPM investments are seen growing some more in the fields of animation and game development, contact center, cybersecurity, financial technology, healthcare, internet service providers, IT solutions, and shared services.
He acknowledged there remain challenges requiring potent management such as talent and skills gap in the workforce, cost pressures, competition from India, Poland and South American countries, the evolving customer needs and business models like hybrid and remote work and relative lack of enabling infrastructure, particularly in the countryside.
