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WHILE
the Philippines leads economic powerhouse China and
nears India in terms of competitiveness in information
technology, the country must always be up on its toes to
reap further benefits of a high-technology-based
economy.
This was
expressed by Business Software Alliance (BSA) executive
Seow Hiong Goh who bared the details of a BSA-funded
study on IT competitiveness of 64 countries.
The
six-month study conducted beginning November last year
showed the Philippines at the 47th place with an overall
score of 28.7, one place below India (29.1).
Goh, who
flew from BSA’s regional headquarters in Singapore, said
the ranking aims to help governments and policymakers to
have a roadmap by which to measure their respective IT
industry.
“The
study addresses the factors needed to enable IT
industries of each country to become competitive
globally; it could be used to measure what each can
produce rather than consume,” Goh said.
He added
that is why they asked the Economist Intelligence Unit
to focus more on the hardware, software, and
services—the bare bones of the industry—and exclude
telecommunications.
According to the six factors used to measure each
country, the Philippines ranks highest in business
environment (38) and lowest in IT infrastructure (55).
Goh said
this means the country remains attractive to
international companies despite a low rate of personal
computer ownership (46 per thousand people) and
inefficient infrastructure.
Likewise, he added there is ease of doing business and a
“relaxed attitude to foreign ownership made the
Philippines a magnet for international IT hardware and
software manufacturers.”
“Still,
your country’s potential for growth can only be realized
if PLDT lowers charges for transmission, switching and
local distribution,” Goh said. The Philippine Long
Distance Telephone Co. remains the largest provider of
the country’s telecommunications backbone.
In terms
of human capital, the Philippines (scoring 40.7)
wouldn’t be able to play catch-up with India (scoring
49.6) unless it can attract its highly skilled citizens
from staying in or returning to the Philippines.
“As of
today, it’s not attractive for them; otherwise you would
have gotten a higher score,” Goh said, adding that “the
government must create mechanisms for Philippines’
diaspora to transfer skills and funds to developing
talent at home.”
An
option is to further support research and development
where the Philippines’s score of 0.4 is as low as
Vietnam’s.
“Based
on the study, the
Philippines
remains an IT user, not a producer,” Goh said, adding
that the spending on R&D was at 0.15 percent of the
country’s gross domestic product while private sector
involvement was only 15 percent.
“Compare
this with
Japan
where 85 percent of R&D spending comes from private
industry,” Goh said.
Still,
he added that while the Philippine government can lead
spending to address these problems and lift the
country’s standing, “it should know when to let go
because it might end up the sole spender, which is also
not good.”
Goh
advises that the Philippine government could continue
further liberalizing the market and encouraging further
competition to increase access of Filipinos to
technology.
“But the
private sector shouldn’t also wait to be told,” he
added.
The
private association BSA groups 27 multinational IT firms
that include Microsoft Inc., Apple Co., Hewlett-Packard
Corp. and Dell Inc. |
