EU offers P70M to finance IT projects

By EDU H. LOPEZ

The European Commission (EC) is investing an initial P70 million to finance two information technology (IT) projects in the country over the next five years. The first project dubbed as "EU-Philippines ComQual" aims to establish long-term, strategic partnerships between Europe and the Philippines in IT and related services.

Ambassador Jan de Kok, head of the EC delegation in the Philippines noted that there has been a deterioration of English language and education in the country over the last decade and there is a need to address this problem.

In order to attract more European investors into the Philippines, there is a need to raise the level of English competency in country.

De Kok noted that the Philippines is an important economic and trading partner of Europe. About 27 percent of the total foreign direct investments (FDI) to the Philippines came from the European Union (EU).

The Philippines has the comparative advantage with some other Southeast Asian countries in terms of services and IT-related services like call center and business process outsourcing, De Kok added.

The ComQual project is aimed at improving the capacity of Philippine IT companies to meet the standards and expectations of EU clients and by matching them with their European counterparts.

Emiliano Zulberrti, technical director of the ComQual project, said the EC has earmarked 40 million euro to implement the project over a five-year period.

The long-term objective is to be able to generate 500,000 euro worth of contracts between European and Filipino IT small and medium-sized companies by June 2007.

Selected small and medium-sized IT companies would be assisted in accessing the European market by exporting their services to their European counterparts under a long-term strategic partnership.

The second project is the facilitation services such as promotions, partner matching, contract structuring and negotiations including marketing of Filipino IT services in Europe.

The project will be carried out by Hanns Seidel Foundation and the European IT Service Center Foundation (EITSC).