Contractors advised to outsource services

The Department of Trade and Industry asked contractors and developers to indulge in overseas projects and engineering service outsourcing to help drive growth in the Philippine construction industry.

“Construction services sector is one of the major revenue-generating sectors of the country whether local or foreign. 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 contributed $116 million to the economy,” said Trade Undersecretary Abdulgani Macatoman. 

“Construction is set to rebound after the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Norman Macapagal, executive vice president of EEI Corp. and president of EEI Limited Inc. during the webinar “Seizing Construction Opportunities Under the New Normal”.

Macapagal said business owners should prepare by accelerating their business transformation and exploring 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. 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,” said Macapagal.