Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

302 SESSION V
after the Marcos administration soiled the image of
the Philippine economy. Third, the legal procedure of
FDI is corrupt in the Philippines. Finally, international
production lines of multinational business firms are
changing after China entered the global restructuring of
assembly lines. FDI by IT companies steadily increases
in these years.
After surveying these conditions, I decided to select the
training field. First, we should choose the training fields
that are demanded by Filipino and foreign companies to
pursue steadiness in job-hunting of graduates. Second,
we should not provide contract-based jobs which
do not provide any skill development opportunities.
For example, in the Philippines and India, American
companies are increasing their telephone operator staff.
Many of these workers are excluded from a career track.
Even though their wages are relatively high, they cannot
expect wage increase that usually comes along with skill
development. I excluded housekeepers, entertainers,
and construction workers because these occupations are
not considered to have skill development possibilities;
also factory workers and seamen because there are many
vocational training schools on these.
I selected two potential fields—nursing and IT
engineering. The FTA between Japan and the Philippines
in 2004 showed that the immigration gate for Philippine
medical workers will gradually open. Nursing schools
in the Philippines need to adapt to Japanese medical
regulations but the Japanese government has not yet
announced the immigration policy for medical workers.
In July 2005, the FTA between these two countries
was roughly arranged but the detailed conditions of
immigrant nurses were not stated. Serious brain drain
problems were already pointed out in the Philippines
medical industry. 6 For instance, especially in rural areas,
low wages cause emigration of nurses; even doctors
obtain nurse licenses to work overseas.
I focused on IT industry that is not yet experiencing a
serious brain drain. There are many computer science
students in the Philippines with relatively high wages
for IT workers. The abundant supply of IT workers
attracts FDI “offshore programming business” from
Europe and the United States; Japanese IT companies
have also started offshore-related FDI. The low wages
not only cause brain drain problems but also increase
domestic employment by FDI.
SITUATION OF THE PHILIPPINES IT
INDUSTRY
The Philippine economy is supported by manufacturing
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows
for export. According to official statistics, the share
of export amount to 44.5% of GDP 7 and electronic
products represent 66.7% of the total export. 8 Almost all
of these electronic products are related to manufacturing
assembly process. Foreign companies invested into some
operations in manufacturing in this country because of
the lower wage level. Specifically in the Philippines,
hardware manufacturing is the dominant industry but
software i.e. IT industry is not. As ASEAN countries
and China entered into bitter competition in the
manufacturing industries in recent years, strengthening
the software and designing industries is an urgent issue
for the Philippines government.
It is apparent that IT industry has started to take off.
According to the Department of Trade and Industry,
the number of IT companies has doubled from 1,739
in 1999 to 3,563 in 2002.9 In micro level, some foreign
IT companies i.e. Microsoft, e-Bay, Amazon, Oracle,
Accenture and so on have started FDI of software
services in the Philippines.
Most large-scale investment is still related to callcenters
and Business Processing Operation (BPO).
The employment scale of telephone operator services
for western countries doubled in 2004—an estimated
employment of 40,000-50,000 workers. 10 In comparison
with India, another worldwide call-center country, the
Philippines has better American-English speakers.
Foreign companies started to employ Filipinos as IT
engineers. For special example, the world-wide main
programming department of Accenture moved to the
Philippines. IT projects of Japanese companies consulted
by that firm are programmed in Manila even when
Accenture has branches in Japan. Japanese companies
have also started FDI. Big companies like Fujitsu and
Canon hire more than 200 Filipino workers; small
companies hire dozens of engineers. Both big and small
companies steadily increase their local employment.
It is worth mentioning that Filipino and Japanese
software companies associations signed for partnership
to establish offshore programming business in October
2004. Trial projects began between member companies
in the summer of 2005.
Though it is important to correct macro labor
information of IT industry, it is obvious that domestic
labor demand for IT engineers will grow in the
Philippines. I also point out that many Japanese IT
companies have started to hire programming specialists;
thus we choose programming as our main target for job
training.