Medium-term plan consultations start next month

Business World

To focus on sectors that can prod economic activity outside Metro Manila

THE GOVERNMENT plans to start by early next month regional consultations on the medium-term development plan for the next six years, with emphasis on sectors that can drive economic activity in the regions, officials of the state socioeconomic planning agency said in separate interviews yesterday.

Cayetano W. Paderanga, Jr., director-general of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), said that, besides business process outsourcing (BPO), the state agency is also looking at the promotion of the tourism and agro-industrial sectors because "those are the industries that... bring development outside the NCR (National Capital Region) to other regions."

Myrna Clara B. Asuncion, director of NEDA’s National Planning and Policy Staff, said separately that the first round of regional consultations on the new mid-term development plan is scheduled on Jan. 4-6.

While Mr. Paderanga said BPO is an industry that cannot be ignored, since the Philippines has gained distinction as a premier location of choice for outsourced services, he noted that this field requires at least a college graduate.

And if industry plans were to proceed, the next step is to graduate to higher-level outsourcing services, called knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), which will need skills more sophisticated than voice-based ones.

Typical KPO services include legal research, market and competitive intelligence, as well as engineering and software design, hence, requiring more advanced or more specialized education or training.

Mr. Paderanga said the tourism industry offers jobs for a wider variety of skills, giving opportunity even to low-skilled workers.

This is also true of the country’s agro-industrial sector, which will help the undeveloped agricultural sector add value to production through processing. The farm sector accounts for about a third of the country’s workers but only about a fifth of national output due to its low productivity.

For his part, NEDA Deputy Director-General Augusto B. Santos said the state agency will also conduct "consistency checking" to coordinate the plans of regional offices of national government agencies, regional development councils and local governments to make sure the same efforts are pursued.

Work on the 2011-2016 development plan took off last month, with various agencies presenting to NEDA their inputs for the infrastructure component.