|
THE
National Competitiveness Council (NCC) and the
Philippines Exporters Confederation Inc. (Philexport)
are confident the export of new services will prop up
the country’s merchandise-export performance in two
years as they project revenues to reach $15 billion a
year until 2010.
In his
presentation at the 2008 State of Philippine
Competitiveness National Conference on Tuesday,
Ambassador Cesar Bautista, NCC cochairman for the
private sector, said the council is targeting to
increase the export of new services to generate around
$15 billion in revenues, which represents at least a
30-percent increase in export performance.
This is
part of the targets of the NCC that also includes
improving the Philippines’ ranking in major
international surveys, such as the World Competitiveness
Yearbook, to reach the top one-third, and to boost
foreign direct investments to account for 3 percent to 4
percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Bautista
stressed that the list of targets is not a “wish list”
since the NCC believes these are reasonable and possible
projections.
Philexport president Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. agreed and
said the export target of the NCC is doable, considering
that in 2006 new export services generated around $4
billion; last year it generated $8 billion.
Revenues
from new export services in 2007 roughly accounted for
16 percent of total exports, which generated total
revenues of around P50.47 billion.
Bautista
said while the Philippines is still ranked among
countries with the most competitive electronics industry
in the world, pinning hopes on electronics alone will
not boost export growth to competitive and desirable
levels.
By
honing and improving new export services, such as
information technology (IT)-related services, the
country, he said, would be able to generate more export
revenues.
These
IT-enabled services include call centers, legal records
and medical transcription, considered at the high end of
services.
Other
services include accountancy, publications, software
development, financial management, research, abstracts,
data mining, human-resource services, web-site design
and data encoding.
Besides
these general targets, Bautista said the NCC aims to
achieve a 10-percent improvement in English, science and
math; increase the number of double dual-training
graduates to 100,000; secure ISO 9001 certification for
at least three public offices; and encourage around 100
to 150 local government units to create world-class road
maps this year.
Other
2008 targets include liberalizing policies to spur
financing for small and medium enterprises; create an
integrated plan for Batangas, Clark, Subic strategic
value-added hubs; lower electricity rate for the export
sector to around P1 to P2 per kilowatt-hour; increase
support from Philippine Development Forum financing and
foreign chambers; and continuing the advocacy and
competitiveness movement to provinces and the general
public.
Bautista
said in order to achieve these targets, the NCC must be
able to forge an effective partnership with government
officials; create a strong network of companies,
chambers, leaders, nongovernment groups, development
partners; align individual actions to the whole; project
financing outside government; and involve legislators
and the Judiciary. |
