ESO seen leading PHL’S post-pandemic recovery

THE government and the private sector are looking at construction as one sector that will lead the economy’s post-covid recovery, as the country is emerges as a strong player in overseas projects and engineering service outsourcing (ESO).

In a recent webinar, Trade Undersecretary Abdulgani M. Macatoman said construction keeps on pumping the economy with revenue, notwithstanding a noted decrease in the number of players.

“As we all know, construction services sector is one of the major revenue generating sectors of the country whether in local or foreign business dealings,” Macatoman said.

“Despite a major decrease in the number of Philippine construction services exporters from over a hundred in the 1980s to 37 at present, the overseas construction industry still contributed its share to the economy: a total amount of $116.08 million,” he added.

Norman Macapagal, president of EEI Corp., said construction is set to rebound once the coronavirus pandemic is through.

As industry players await for the dust to settle, Macapagal recommended they should prepare to speed up their business transformation and explore opportunities to work on foreign projects.

“In our company, we have been talking about changing our procedures, because they are too long, with too many signatures involved,” he disclosed.

“When the pandemic came in and we were on lockdown, the procedures that we were discussing for over a year were suddenly simplified. We were forced to look at new construction techniques and methods because of the need to survive,” Macapagal added.

As for firms wanting to bid for projects abroad, Macapagal said they should focus on studying the fiscal and labor regimes of the foreign country, as well as its regulations.

On the other hand, Ernesto de Castro, president of Esca Inc., said he considers ESO as a high-value service that the Philippines can host in its business-process outsourcing (BPO) operations.

In 2016, ESO in the country contributed 1 percent of the total outsourcing revenue and 0.5 percent of the global accounts at $250 million.

“We are already number one in voice services, but the challenge is to move from voice to non-voice, in particular, to go into the high valueadded activities under KPO [knowledge process outsourcing] and link these services embedded to manufacturing, such as finance, design, and engineering,” de Castro explained.

To develop the industry, de Castro proposed training local engineers on building information modeling, which crafts intelligent models to be used in construction and is replacing CAD in many countries, such as in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia.