The newly formed ICT Council, which was organized by the local business chamber, also cited the city’s lack of infrastructure to house would-be locators. "We hope to make Zamboanga City the next wave city and hope to take a share of the $50-billion information and communications technology industry by 2016," Pedro Rufo N. Soliven, president of the Zamboanga Chamber of Commerce and Foundation, Inc., said in a recent interview.
On Tuesday last week, the ICT Council held a strategic planning exercise on how to solve the lack of facilities to entice investors into this city. "We are making a scorecard and we are scoring high. We have a unique selling proposition as a bilingual city with emphasis on Spanish-speaking markets," Mr. Soliven said.
Majority of the residents in this city speak Spanish pidgin called Chavacano. ICT Council President Louel Saavedra described the dialect as giving this city a "special niche", saying the existing skills pool can also attract health-care and accounting services.
This city is lagging behind other key cities in Mindanao which have developed ICT services, notably Davao and Cagayan de Oro.
In 2009, a group of local businessmen set up a contact center here, e.AXS Communications, with just 50 seats. Since then, no other group has invested in BPO here due to poor, unstable communications connectivity.
The Regional Information Technology and Electronic Commerce Committee of the Regional Development Council and the ICT Council will hold here on Sept. 26-27, 2012 ZamPen ICT Conference and Trade Exhibit to firm up plans to attract investors in this field.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Darwin T. Wee
Quelle/Source: BusinessWorld Online Edition, 21.08.2012
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