The Philippines’ Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) sector earned $11 billion in revenues in 2011 and is set to hit targets projected in the sector’s Road Map 2016, according to Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) President and Chief Executive Officer Benedict Hernandez. The revenue figures mark a 24 percent increase over 2010.

Hernandez added that these numbers indicate a good start to the industry’s five-year plan to grow at an average rate of 20 % each year, which is above the projected global annual growth rate of 10 to 15 %. 

Last year, the IT-BPO sector also provided 638,000 job opportunities, an increase of 22% percent from 2010. It is projected that at a 20 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), the country’s IT-BPO will become a $25-billion industry within the next four years; cornering 10 percent of the world’s IT-BPO market and contributing about 9 percent of the country’s GDP.

The non-voice business process and knowledge process (KP) services sub sectors, on the other hand, earned more than $2 billion in revenues, employed almost 130,000 and saw 24 percent growth in 2011, according to BPAP senior executive director Gillian Virata.

Virata added that figures show that the country’s IT-BPO industry is steadily moving into high value services. There is a relatively sharp spike in the revenue-to-employee ratio for ITO and also for HIMO, which increased the ratio overall for the entire industry. The trend, according to Virata, is in line with BPAP’s growth plans which are in turn aligned with the government’s plans for the local IT BPO sector.