Bacolod City needs to promote itself as a site for outsourced back-office operations, Bacolod Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, chairperson of the Bacolod Information Technology Focus Team, said.

She also said that, aside from hosting call centers, she is also eyeing that the city will have locators for back-office operations like accounting, software development, engineering, architectural design, medical, legal and data transcription, computer graphics, animation, game development and design.

Batapa said during the e-Services Philippines global sourcing conference and exhibition next month, the IT Focus Team is expected to find more opportunities as officials of foreign companies will look for ICT sites during the event.

The Bacolod ICT Team will be joined by representatives from the Department of Trade and Industry Provincial Office, she said. She added that, since the Philippines competes with more than 30 countries today for the BPO and ICT markets, it is important for Bacolod City and Negros Occidental to have the legal and technical background in attracting investments.

Bacolod has been named by an international firm as one of the upcoming IT hubs outside of Metro Manila, mainly due to several benchmarks, including presence of ICT infrastructure, connectivity redundancy, accredited real estate, qualified and highly-trainable human resource, among others.

The key is to make sure that incentives in real estate under national laws are easily available even in Bacolod, Batapa-Sigue said.

There are now two IT zones in Bacolod City, the Robinsons Metro as IT building and The Block IT Park.

Luxor IT Center (formerly Bacolod Convention Plaza Hotel), Lopue's East IT Center, Bacolod IT Park, Lopue's San Sebastian and Monfort IT Building, already accredited by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority, are awaiting presidential proclamations.*NLG

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