The Department of Labor and Employment said that the government is taking measures to mobilize the country's cyber services sector as an engine of economic and employment growth.

Acting Secretary Danilo Cruz said in a statement he issued that the cyber services sector is one of the nine key employment generating sectors to be highlighted in the 2006 National Manpower Summit in Manila on March 2.

The other eight sectors considered as key employment generating sectors are mining, health services, hotel and restaurant, agribusiness, medical tourism, aviation, creative industries, and overseas employment.

Cruz said that at the preparatory Consultation Forum for the Cyber Service Sector last week the sector has been "singled out as the fastest growing sector of the Philippine economy in terms of output and employment," the DOLE said in a statement.

At a briefing with the Bureau of Local Employment, Commissioner Damian Domingo Mapa of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology said that with the measures to produce the right workers, the cyber services industry's total employment capacity is projected to grow to 1.083 million by 2010, from the 163,000 workers employed in 2005.

Mapa has recommended improvements in education and training like teaching English, the language of global cyber services and communications, in four years of college, and enforcing "English-only zones" among the country's high schools, the statement added.*

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