THE Philippine government is buoyant on the future of the local business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry, predicting it would generate a million jobs and $13 billion in annual revenues by 2010.

The rosy picture was drawn by Ray Anthony Roxas Chua III, chief of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), Wednesday at the sidelines of the ICT Professionals Congress.

He said President Arroyo’s training-workshop program for the offshoring and outsourcing (O&O) sector is the vital tool for attaining the agency’s vision of employing close to 1 million Filipinos.

This year, he added, the President has allocated P350 million from the PGMA Training for Work Scholarship Program of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) for the O&O sector. Through this program, Chua said the CICT hopes to train over 40,000 people to help them qualify to work in the O&O industry.

“We at the CICT believe that through this sterling example of public-private partnership, our lofty objectives are within our reach,” he said.

Aside from generating jobs and revenue, the CICT also hopes to capture 10 percent of the global O&O market by 2010. Another focus is the continuing development of the Philippine Cyber Corridor, a virtual channel running across the country that houses providers of ICT-enabled services such as call centers, back- office outsourcing, software development, medical and legal transcription, animation, game development, e-learning and e-entertainment.

The Cyber Corridor has created 320,000 jobs to date and generated close to $5 billion of export revenues in 2007, said Chua.

“Achieving our growth targets for the industry will be heavily dependent on our ability to sustain our pool of talent,” he added.

Secretary Augusto Syjuco of Tesda said his agency is intensifying efforts to train new call-center agents to fill the demand. “We have the potential to capture half of all the call-center requirements of regions in the world in the next five years, but it all depends on our ability to keep churning out the supply of knowledge workers to fulfill this potential.”

Under Executive Order 269, the CICT is designated the lead agency in government efforts to make the Philippines an e-enabled society by making ICT central to nation-building and national competitiveness.

The CICT envisions a Philippines with affordable and reliable ICT connectivity, a globally competitive ICT and ICT-enabled services sector, an ICT-competent work force and an ICT-enhanced government delivering services with efficiency and transparency.