TRABAHO BILL SETS P25-B FOR IT-BPO

The government will allocate P5 billion for five years to to upscale the skills of those employed in the IT-BPO sector

Manila -- The Tax Reform for Attracting Better and High-quality Opportunities or Trabaho bill is allocating P25 billion for five years for the information technology and business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) sector to upscale the skills of its employees.

Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo told reporters that the government will allocate P5 billion annually for five years for the IT-BPO industry once Trabaho bill is enacted into law.

“We direct this incentive to the source of competitiveness [of the industry], which is your people,” Rodolfo said.

According to House Bill No. 8083, the P5-billion annual allocation for the IT-BPO sector “shall be solely used to pay for formal academic or training programs of accredited private or public schools and training centers."

Rodolfo added that this perk is somehow akin to the voucher system implemented before for the industry to give trainings to those who would like to work in the IT-BPO sector. But this time, the budget is for upgrading the workforce to maintain the competitiveness of the industry.

The industry has aired its concerns in the second package of the tax reform program of the administration, particularly fearing to lose certain perks once this bill on rationalization of fiscal incentives is passed. /

“Our current scenario is that the existing mobile network operators could not rollout more cell towers. The problem they are facing is more on the bureaucracy side -- the number of permits.”

Shanshil Ahmed Shibly Telenor