Interesting piece of articles about the Philippines

July 1, 2006 by reyna11
Filed under: Uncategorized

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Bits and pieces of articles I found which I thought I would share to you all….

Philippine Economy - 24th largest economy

The Philippines is a developing country in South-East Asia. In 2004, it was ranked as the 24th largest economy by the World Bank according to purchasing power parity.

Important sectors of the Philippine economy include agriculture and industry, particularly food processing, textiles and garments, and electronics and automobile parts. Most industries are concentrated in the urban areas around metropolitan Manila. Mining also has great potential in the Philippines, which possesses significant reserves of chromite, nickel, and copper. Recent natural gas finds off the islands of Palawan add to the country’s substantial geothermal, hydro, and coal energy reserves.

Can you imagine? I did not even know this information until I ran accross this looking for some other information on wikepedia. I was surprised to find out that the Philippine Economy is even bigger than that of Malaysia, Sweden, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Norway, Chile and oh, ahh… Singapore!

ABS Systems - Made in the Philippines!

The ABS system used in Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volvo cars are made in the Philippines. This is the first year (2005) ever that the Philippines will be exporting cars in quantity courtesy of Ford Motor Company.

So, stop laughing you guys with our boxy Ford Fiera (whatever happened to that?!), chances are, since you’re very successful now, driving some flashy cars, chances are that the ABS systems in your car ay gawa pala nang mga Pinoy!

Rapid growth of call centers

The Philippines is considered as the most serious rival to India in the global BPO market. This is because as a former American colony, the country’s education system is patterned after the American education system and this includes American-style diction and pronunciation of the English language. This gives Filipino-English a neutral or an almost American accent, an advantage in dealing with the mostly American clientele. By contrast, while an emerging IT powerhouse, India’s call center industry is criticized for having a language barrier due to the fact that Indians (as a former British colony) are educated in British-style English which is compounded by the heavy Indian accent. In 2005, the country ranked 3rd in the world for top BPO destinations, according to neoIT’s 2005 Mapping Offshore Markets Update.

A survey by Kelly Services, Inc. based in Michigan, showed that India is no longer the first choice of U.S. companies looking to setup their offshore backroom operations. The study also cited companies eyeing the Philippines as the better site due to quality. Filipinos enjoy a comparative advantage over American workers since (1) labor costs in the Philippines are a fraction of US labor costs (5/2006 minimum wage of approx $7 per day), and (2) most BPO workers in the Philippines are college graduates. Many overseas labor sourcers also prefer Filipinos over Indians when it comes to customer support and customer interaction due to Filipinos’ relative ease and familiarity with American culture and US slang.

Regional hub for shared corporate backrooms

The Philippines is fast becoming a regional and global hub for shared corporate backroom operations, especially for financial services such as accounting and bookkeeping, account maintenance, accounts receivable collection, accounts payable administration, payroll processing, asset management, financial analysis and auditing, management consulting, inventory control and purchasing, expense and revenue reporting, financial reporting, tax reporting, and other finance-related services such as financial leasing, credit card administration, factoring and stock brokering; as well as for logistics management, and cargo shipment management.

Accounting primarily for these companies’ choice of the Philippines as the location for their shared backroom operations is the country’s rich pool of low-cost yet English- and IT-proficient business, accounting, HRM and engineering graduates. Moreover, the World Competitiveness Report 2001 ranked the Philippines 16th of 49 countries for “International Business Experience.” These professionals are also particularly noteworthy for their marked customer service orientation, superior work ethic, high degree of trainability, flexibility, multicultural adaptability, and loyalty. Rounding up the Philippines’ advantages as a BPO destination are its strategic location, the availability of prime yet low-cost real estate in the country, its good and increasingly cost-competitive telecommunications and other business infrastructure, its expatriate-agreeable lifestyle, and its progressively IT-supportive policies and incentives.

Filipino animators doing well globally

Filipino animators do well in the global market for animation, which is fast growing due to the increasing popularity of animation as an entertainment medium not just for free and cable TV and the movies but also for computer games, as well as an advertising medium, a graphics medium for Internet content, and an information and educational tool.

Their services range from full 2D and 3D animation, including pre- and post-production services such as layouting, in-betweening, clean-up, digital background production through scanning and pre-compositing, color styling, special effects creation, and digital ink and paint application, to flash animation and web design, graphic and art design, mobile applications, and art and animation training.

Tags: Business & Economy