By Emmanuel Amador
June 29, 2010

The best IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) locations in the Philippines were feted awards at the Recognition Night for the Top Ten Next Wave Cities 2010, held at the Cebu Sports Club last June 22 in Cebu City. Topping this year’s list was Davao City, followed by Sta. Rosa (Laguna) and Bacolod City.

The ranking was based on the Next Wave Cities (NWC) scorecard, an evaluation system established by the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P), the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

Iloilo City, Metro Cavite, Lipa City, Cagayan de Oro City, Malolos City, Baguio City and Dumaguete City placed fourth to tenth on the list respectively.

In addition to naming the Top 10 BPO locations, the NWC evaluation also moved Angeles-Clark from Next Wave City status to an Established IT-BPO Hub, joining Metro Manila and Metro Cebu. Metro Cebu and Metro Clark were also recognized as Centers for Excellence.

The general criteria of the 2010 NWC scorecard are the availability of graduates and workers, infrastructure, cost, and business environment. These criteria were further broken down to consider relevant factors such as the presence of higher educational institutions, capacity to absorb new employment requirements, quality of roads, access to domestic and international air travel, the presence of fiber-optic network providers, availability of property sites, cost of labor and office space, regulatory fees and taxes, vulnerability to natural disasters, reliability of utilities, the peace and order situation, and the presence of PEZA-approved facilities and ICT councils.

In a short presentation during the event, CICT Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III noted the importance of the IT-BPO sector to the continued growth of the region. Chua pointed out that the sector had not only recovered from the global financial crisis, but was still growing and providing more jobs that allowed workers to stay in the Philippines.

BPA/P CEO Oscar Sañez followed up with another presentation on managing IT-BPO growth through the NWC initiative. He noted that the availability of qualified and competent local talent was still the most important factor for choosing the Philippines as an outsourcing location.

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