PGMA sets week-long cyber-corridor tour
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President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will visit starting today cities and capital towns all over the country, which are
referred to as cyber corridor because they have become the locations of choice by firms engaged in information
and communications technology (ICT) and business process outsourcing (BPO).
First stop for the President’s week-long tour is Angeles City, part of the so-called Pampanga Central.
The tour will highlight the part of the President’s legacy that provides the human and physical infrastructure for
the ICT-BPO sector, which creates high-paying jobs for young Filipinos.
In a media briefing this morning in Malacanang, Presidential Deputy Spokesperson Gary Olivar said the
President will visit ICT-BPO centers in Metro Manila and Cebu City as well as in the top ten next-wave zones for
this sunshine industry.
The ten, identified by the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), Commission on
Information and Communications Technology (CICT), and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), are Metro
Laguna, Metro Cavite, Iloilo, Davao, Bacolod, Bulacan East, Bulacan West Cagayan de Oro, Lipa City, and
Pampanga Central.
Olivar said these areas earned the designation because of availability of ICT graduates and workers,
telecommunications access; low rent and power costs; and government organizations that support IT-BPO
operations.
Also, these areas are serviced by 10 international airports and 15 domestic airports, thus making them
conducive to international operations.
At the moment, Olivar said, the cyber corridor hosts 75,000 call centers and BPO companies.
“It is the intention of the administration that the cyber corridor serve as a one-stop shop for e-services investors
who may want to invest in our country,” Olivar said.
The cyber corridor was set up according to a plan prepared by 31 ICT councils composed of representatives
from the private sector, the academe, and local government units in partnership with CICT, DTI, and BPAP.
In 2006, the president introduced the super regions concept dividing the country into five areas of development:
North Luzon Agribusiness Quadrangle, Luzon Urban Beltway, Central Philippines for Tourism, Agribusiness
Mindanao, and Cyber Corridor.
The President has tasked government agencies to ensure the competitiveness of the ICT-BPO sector, promote
investments in the Cyber Corridor and the Next Wave Cities; ensure the supply of talent for the BPO-IT industry;
increase awareness in the use of ICT; encourage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to utilize technology;
and motivate entrepreneurs and LGUs to support the BPO-IT industry.
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PGMA receives Nobel winner for medicine
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President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo this morning received Nobel Laureate for Medicine, Prof. Torsten Wiesel,
who is in the country as part of the Bridges Program of the International Peace Foundation.
Prof. Wiesel was accompanied to Malacañang by Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral and Uwe Morawetz,
chairman of the Board of Directors of Bridges.
The Bridges Program brings Nobel Laureates together in a dialogue intended for the creation of a culture of
peace and harmony in the global community.
In a short remark, the President said the visit came at an ideal time, when the administration is conducting talks
with the Muslim separatist groups and with the Communist insurgency in an effort to create a lasting and
meaningful peace for the country.
Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1981 for his pioneering work on the neural basis of visual
perception, carried out in collaboration with Professor David H. Hubel at the Harvard Medical School.
Their studies showed how visual information collected by the retina is transmitted to and processed in the
visual cortex of the brain. Their experiments greatly expanded the scientific knowledge of sensory processing
and showed that ocular dominance develops irreversibly early in childhood development.
These studies opened the door for the understanding and treatment of childhood cataracts and strabismus.
In 1998, Wiesel was elected president of the Paris-based International Brain Research Organization. He has
served since 2000 as secretary general of the Human Frontier Science Program, an organization based in
Strasbourg, France.
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PGMA hosts lunch for NPT workshop delegates
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President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo today hosted lunch for the 105 delegates to the two-day Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review workshop, which opened today at the New World Hotel in Makati City.
The Philippines has accepted the presidency of the 2010 Review Conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), with Ambassador Libran Cabactulan discharging the function.
Those who participate in the review workshop are ambassadors from Brazil, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Ukraine,
Zimbabwe, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Japan,
Germany, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo also participate in the review workshop, as do representatives from the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Council of the EU High Representative, International
Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, and Philippine Government organizations.
The Philippines is an ideal choice for the 2010 NPT Review Conference presidency. It has always taken the
position that the world is better off without the threat of nuclear annihilation.
It has called on the international community to energize the negotiation on the substantive issues, stalled for
several years, for the benefit of humanity.
The workshop aims to provide the opportunity for delegates from developing countries to participate and
complement other multilateral disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation meetings.
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PGMA opens BPO firm's Taguig office
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President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will inaugurate tomorrow (Tuesday) the UST Global delivery center in Taguig
City.
UST Global is a leading provider of end-to end IT (Information Technology) and BPO (business process
outsourcing) services and solutions for the Global 1000 market.
The opening of the new office here reflects the growing demand for the company's outsourcing services and
strengthens the Philippines' presence as UST's second largest location outside the United States, following
India.
UST statement said it has invested in the Philippines to take advantage of the country's highly skilled IT
workforce.
The Southern California company has hired 1,000 new recruits. It hopes to expand the headcount to over 5,000
over the next few years.
Operating in 14 countries, the company has grown to over 6,000 associates worldwide.
Earlier in the day, the President will visit the Jose Rizal University in Mandalayong City as part of her campus tour
aimed at calling on the youth to help ensure a clean, fair and peaceful elections in May.
At the same time, the President wants to enjoin the youth to develop a culture of non-violence.
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PGMA's Super Regions legacy tour shifts to cyber corridor
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ANGELES CITY, Pampanga – Two down. Three more to go.
After announcing a comprehensive tour to review her government’s Super Regions legacy of accomplishments
starting with the North Luzon Agribusiness Quadrangle in Batac, Ilocos Norte last week, President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo focused her attention today at appraising the Cyber Corridor.
The Cyber Corridor, together with the NLAQ, Luzon Urban Beltway, Agribusiness Mindanao and Tourism Central
Philippines, comprise President Arroyo’s Super Regions program which was specifically “designed to spread
development away from an inequitable concentration in Metro Manila.”
In her speech at the Angeles University Foundation covered court, the President said that the Cyber Corridor is
now a multi-billion peso industry “made up of the strongest potential locations for ICT (information and
communication technology) investments, services, and activities including call centers, back office, software
development, medical transcription, engineering design, animation and game development.”
“It currently houses 750 call centers and business process outsourcing or BPO companies served by three high-
bandwidth backbone and digital networks,” she said.
The shift from just a tiny fraction of the whole BPO industry with only 2,000 workers in 2001, according to her,
has grown into a “global powerhouse” ready to take on India’s claim for BPO supremacy.
The President stressed that this rise of the Philippine BPO industry can be accorded to “promoting strategic
investments in three areas” namely: a connectivity infrastructure backbone, an appropriate policy and legal
environment and the development of human capital.
She said that by encouraging telecom industry players to invest billions in international gateway redundancy
programs, international call costs have gone down to single digit prices, has increased internet usage and has
assured that “no Taiwan tremor or tsunami can cut off our cyber services from their global clients.”
The creation of the Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT) with the guidance of the
ICT sector and minimal government interference, the President stressed, has also allowed market growth of the
higher value added segments of offshoring and outsourcing industries such as accounting, legal, human
resources and administrative services.
“Instead of regulating, we gave incentives to developers of IT parks, assisted investors in identifying promising
provincial sites and built more transport centers,” she said.
On the development of human capital, the President said her government’s efforts to get school children
interested in computer-literacy curricula has paid off.
“More than 5,000 schools now have computer laboratories while almost 4,000 schools have been connected to
the internet. In technical education and skills training, we have invested three times of three previous
administrations combined. A very large portion of this investment goes to scholarships for call center training,”
she said.
“The 500,000 jobs created in the BPO industry are part of the legacy I will leave, a legacy of hard work, a strong
and stable economy, renewed global engagement, major investments in healthcare and education and
dramatic improvements in physical infrastructure,” the President said.
“Much work remains to be done, but I am determined to turn over a new government a New Philippines, one that
is ready for the challenges of bringing the nation to the verge of First World in 20 years,” she added.
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