THE head of the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (Ibpap) is confident that the industry will expand this year.
“We are fairly certain to [achieve] positive growth,” Ibpap President and CEO Jack Madrid told reporters on Wednesday.
The gains will be driven by global capability centers (GCCs), he noted.
GCCs are specialized, company-owned offshore or nearshore units established by multinational corporations to perform core business functions like IT, research and development, finance and engineering. Unlike outsourcing, GCCs are fully-owned extensions of the parent company, focusing on driving innovation, digital transformation and leveraging global talent pools to increase efficiency and value.
There are 160 GCCs in the country, Madrid noted, saying he expects the number to increase, potentially outpacing the overall growth rate of the information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) sector, leading to higher revenue rates for workers.
There is a need to shift on how the IT-BPM industry is measured from job growth to revenue per employee, Madrid said.
“We need to measure and determine success by the level of capability of the [digitally skilled] Filipino. This is why talent development [including] upskilling and reskilling is very important, especially now that automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are integrated into the services we deliver,” Madrid explained.
“[Workers] can leverage and take advantage of generative AI, which needs human judgment, human decision-making and human empathy,” he said.
In 2025, the country’s IT-BPM industry posted $40 billion in export revenues, provided 80,000 jobs and earned $2 billion.
This year, Ibpap projects $42 billion in export revenues with a 5-percent growth in sector revenues and 1.97 million jobs.
It identified three priorities to sustain its growth trajectory: scaling AI responsibly; expanding global capability centers; and enriching and protecting present and future talents.
