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It seems all is not really loss for the Philippines in spite of a lot of Filipinos became jobless because of the global recession, there is hope… from the Information and Technology (IT) industry at least. That is because the industry, particularly the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is expected to grow by 20 to 25 percent or to generate approximately 90,000 jobs this year.

Chairman Ray Anthony Chua of the Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT) reported that for 2008, the BPO sector generated about 372,000  jobs and $6 billion in revenue for the IT industry.

Comprising the places that are included in the “10 next wave cities” for the growth and expansion of BPO are Metro Manila, Laguna, Iloilo, Davao, Bacolod, Pampanga, Bulacan, Cagayan de Oro and Lipa City in Batangas.

Philippines , which is considered as one of the leading IT-BPO countries, is ranked second to India outside of  Canada in terms of market share in IT-BPO global market. Chua is optimistic that that “despite the global financial crisis, we still expect the industry to grow this year. So we are working on all that to help the industry sustain its growth.”

Because of this, CICT is taking the initiative to ensure the growth of the IT-BPO industry sector by including the provision of subsidies for training for potential recruits in the IT-BPO sector and also by ‘rolling out’ what they call a career caravan which will help promote IT-BPO opportunities around the country.

Unfortunately though, some investors are wary about Davao and Cagayan de Oro because of the reported violence in the areas. This is because travel advisories most of times would cover the entire Mindanao when the conflict are only confined to specific areas.

But in spite of that, Chua said that the Philippines’ reputation is becoming more and more enhanced around the world as far as BPO is concerned.