The Philippines' IT / BPO Industry

The first foreign investors discovered the Philippines already in the mid 80s, finding a lively local IT-market with many independent companies and a wide range of expertise. Early starters like Accenture, which started with a handful of employees at this time, employ today thousands of people in their service center here in the Philippines.

With the development of the IT-sector and the improvement of the worldwide communication the Philippines' IT/BPO sector has grown rapidly over the last years,  becoming second after India in the global contact centre and BPO business. In addition, other areas as software development, medical & legal transcription, animation and engineering design have grown steadily, too. Engineering Design e.g. was the fastest growing segment in 2007 with an increase of 124% in revenue over the past year - reflecting the shift to knowledge intensive services. Based on a well educated workforce with expertise in a wide range of areas - from accounting via medicine to engineering - knowledge processing outsourcing (KPO) has become an important part of all sections of the Philippine IT/BPO industry and is constantly increasing.