ICT industry team chooses India

India has been chosen as the destination for a benchmarking study mission in March by top leaders of the Information Communications Technology (ICT) industry cluster team headed by chairman Wit Holganza.
“We’re going to India for our benchmarking trip instead of Singapore to find out how we can link up with the world-class ICT industries there,” Holganza said during a project monitoring report to Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Holganza said India can help boost the capabilities and capacities of various business process outsourcing (BPO), call centers and medical transcription firms in Davao because of the highly-developed ICT industry in that Asian country.
“There are lot of things we can learn from these Indians in terms of new concepts and new technologies that we haven’t got over here, they can teach us a lot,” the ICT industry cluster team chairman said.
The recent visit of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Davao to see for herself the rapid growth of the ICT industry after touring the offices and call center facilities of Sutherland Global Services and Concentrix highlighted the significance of the industry’s impressive growth in the Davao region.
Holganza said the President was visibly impressed by the huge potential of manpower resources in Davao, around half million highly skilled workers to fill the manpower needs of new ICT investments in this part of the country.
The ICT industry chairman also revealed that an in-bound mission coming from Melbourne and Sydney, Australia will visit Davao to see the various facilities, look over available skilled manpower and size up the city’s capacity to absorb new ICT investments from Australian investors.
This was followed earlier by a Manila exploratory mission from the Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) who came over to visit the various call centers and met with various ICT industry officials and top executives of telecommunications firms in a bid to size up the total capability of Davao to be able to absorb more new investments in business process outsourcing (BPO) and call center operations.
Holganza cited JICA for their technical and funding support in putting into action several of their plans and programs designed to boost the growth of the ICT industry in the Davao region.
Several of the region’s ICT programs and projects were set into motion by JICA under the Davao Industry Cluster Capacity Enhancement Project (DICCEP), a joint project of JICA and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) with full technical support by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), National Telecommunications Center (NTC), academe, private sector and local government units.  PNA