WITH its flourishing business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, there is a need for Negros Occidental to move up the value chain by further improving other sectors of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry, particularly knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), a lawmaker said.
Senator Juan Edgardo Angara said KPO comprises higher value activities that provide bigger salaries to its workforce.
Angara said the province, especially Bacolod, has huge potential in terms of KPO, including animation and game development.
“In Manila, they are talking about creative cities. Bacolod City can actually qualify for it, because it has many graduates for creative, those who are not only good in speaking English but also more talented for KPO,” he added.
The senator visited the Negros First Cyber Centre during his visit.
He met with the officials of the Bacolod-Negros Federation for Information and Communication Technology (Bnefit), and representatives of some local startups operating at the Technology Business Incubation Center.
Angara said he wanted to make a follow-up on the “good things” about Bacolod, which he learned during one of the conventions of the ICT Council he attended.
“Through this visit, I have learned a little more on the interests of the workforce here and on how the government can help them in moving things forward,” the senator said.
Angara, one of the authors of the law creating the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), said he will bring to the attention of the agency the need for more trainings in the province.
There is also a depleting number of computer science graduates in the province, said Angara, who is a member of the Senate committee on education.
“We need to find out the reasons why, from the Commission on Higher Education,” the senator said, adding that aside from addressing the talent supply gap, there is also a need to ensure quality of talents.
“We have a lot of graduates who are not yet efficient in encoding thus, we have to work on their training and education,” Angara pointed out.
Moreover, the senator said he is pushing for the strengthening of the Rural Impact Sourcing, among other cities and municipalities in the province, not only in Bacolod.
Through the RIS program of DICT, BPO and KPO can thrive anywhere in the country. The agency, however, should hasten the implementation of the National Broadband Plan to provide reliable internet connections especially to remote areas, Angara added.
“There is really a rapid development for ICT, which is considered the biggest industry already with growth potential that is even bigger thus, we need also to step up our efforts in preparing our talent pool,” he further said.
