The Philippine Software Industry Association said Wednesday it expects revenues to reach $7 billion and employ about 200,000 people by 2022.
“We are [expecting] a little over $3 billion [in revenues] this year and we are looking at growing this significantly by 2020 to the tune of $5 billion to $7 billion,” PSIA president Jonathan De Luzuriaga told reporters in a news briefing.
De Luzuriaga said in terms of employment, the sector expects to generate 200,000 jobs by 2022, up from 123,000 this year.
“There’s still so much opportunity for growth,” he said.
De Luzuriaga, who is also an executive at Spring Valley Inc., said the Philippines should develop further homegrown talents and “techno-preneurs” who could further push the Philippines into new areas of software services.
He said the young, technology-savvy entrepreneurs could be trained to become more attuned to changing to consumer requirements, with ability to come up with new and innovative services.
De Luzuriaga said more companies were becoming familiar with the use of cloud computing, but the industry was also seeing more utilization on mobile space, app-based consumer facilities and the use of social media platforms for service-orientated communication.
“We need to come up with new products that will serve not just the domestic market but the global market as well. There’s a wider variety of development going on and the local software industry has to hit the ground running on this,” he said.
De Luzuriaga said the industry was pushing for more initiatives that would prepare local software developers to address the needs of changing global software landscape.
“The future will be in what I call as three buckets: Digitizations where previously known manual services will become digital. Second is the transition to automation and artificial intelligence. And third will be a variety of delivery models, particularly cloud-based platforms and social media,” he said.
“The Philippine software industry is not just going to push for increasing the quantity of its people, but to improve the quality of its workforce because we’re seeing more competition,” De Luzuriaga said.