HOPES were dashed for the country to have a Department of Information Technology as other booming countries that surpassed the Philippines did when Science chief Mario G. Montejo said it is not necessary.

“We are not bothered. We will proceed with our work as long as the ICTO [Information and Communications Technology Office] is under the DOST.”

Montejo spoke during the first press conference after the Commission on ICT was devolved as a unit under then-President Arroyo to an agency attached to the Department of Science and Technology when President Aquino assumed the post.

Montejo said during the press briefing that he’s optimistic the business-process outsourcing (BPO) sector can meet its target of contributing about 8.6 percent to the Philippines’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2016, the last year of Mr. Aquino’s term.

“We are very positive, very bullish that we can be No. 1.”

Business Process Association Philippines (BPAP) Chairman Alfredo Ayala said the BPO industry has contributed an estimated 5.4 percent of the GDP in 2011.

Ayala noted that the industry was also able to create 640,000 direct and 1.6 million indirect jobs. These, he added, translates to about $11 billion in export revenues.

Likewise, he expects about 1.3 million direct and 3.2 million indirect jobs would be created by 2016.

Ayala said the industry expects export revenues to hit $25 billion by that year.

However, Montejo clarified that the jobs created last year were not new and is the total employment of the sector.

Ayala also admitted that the target jobs to be generated in 2016 would not be new. Nonetheless, he expects the net new jobs would be at only 2 million.

Considered a sunrise industry, BPOs have been credited with easing pressures on unemployment and on forcing Filipino talents to go abroad.

Still, it has been struggling with faltering supply despite Filipino laborers touted to be not only highly-capable in communicating in English but also cheaper.

DOST-ICTO Deputy Executive Director Alejandro Melchor III said Filipino workers are a fifth of the labor cost compared to India’s and the United States’s “not to mention the taxes imposed in the US that gets to as high as 32 percent.”

In addition, Melchor said BPOs enjoy incentives in the country like exemption from paying property tax for five years.

These, he said, would still make the Philippines the destination for most BPO companies even if the US passes a law disincentivizing outsourcing.

US President Barack Obama, in his resent State of the Union Address aggressively pushed for “insourcing,” aimed at generating jobs within the US borders.

A flagging economy has kept the US jobs market anemic since a recession there was declared in 2009.

But Melchor and Ayala allayed fears that US “insourcing” moves would gravely impact on the BPO sector in the Philippines, with the former saying the industry has already proven to be “recession-proof, slowdown-resistant, electoral politics-bullet proof.”

Still, Montejo said there is a need for a study to see the multiplier effect of the industry.

“We don’t have the numbers here on the multiplier effects of the BPO on the economy. I estimate it is much, much more than revenue.”

BPAP executive Gillian Joy Virata told reporters after the press briefing that the industry reflects “steady” growth and that there is also little effect of the economic crises in the European continent.

“We have 10 percent of business coming from the United Kingdom but the sources of business from the European Union are much smaller because of the language.”

However, Virata said that when language is not a part of the transaction and concerns only information technology and engineering, the Philippines has been seeing activities from the Scandinavian countries.

She noted that on the average, about 300 companies visit the Philippines annually and about eight of every 10 of them will do business here “either partnering with existing companies or setting up shop on their own.”

During the press briefing, the DOST-ICTO bared its five-point strategy to assist the industry in meeting its goals.

One of the strategies is focusing on talent development or ensuring that there is a steady supply of Filipino workers.