Outsourcing firms jittery over Duterte rhetoric, stakeholders say | ABS-CBN

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Outsourcing firms jittery over Duterte rhetoric, stakeholders say

Outsourcing firms jittery over Duterte rhetoric, stakeholders say

Ron Gagalac,

ABS-CBN News

 | 

Updated Oct 13, 2016 07:38 PM PHT

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Reuters

MANILA - President Rodrigo Duterte's tirades against the United States and the European Union has caused "jitters" among clients of the country's outsourcing sector, industry leaders said Thursday.

Outsourcing is among major job generators and drivers of economic growth, which is expected to outpace Southeast Asia until 2018, according to S&P Global Ratings.

"As far as I've been advised by my members, there are some jitters among clients but basically we have told them, this rhetoric we're hearing, all the political noise, does not necessarily translate to policy changes, so that's what's important to them," said Genny Inocencio-Marcial, executive director of IT-BPO Association of the Philippines (IBPAP).

IBPAP is the largest association of information technology and business process outsourcing companies in the Philippines. They comprise around 326 member companies, or about 90 percent of the 1.2 million direct hired employees.

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While no company has decided to pull out investments and business in the country, some seemed to have put expansion plans on hold, Marcial said.

A hiring freeze has been monitored in human resources and manpower agencies, said Rhoda Caliwara president of the Philippine Association of Legitimate Service Contractors Inc.

Some companies are also concerned that they will be forced to hire workers they get from manpower agencies as regular employees under Duterte's crackdown on labor contractualization, Caliwara said.

Some analysts have blamed the President's fiery statements for a record outflow of foreign funds from the stock market and the peso's weakness to seven-year lows.

Others attribute the markets' decline to concerns an interest rate increase by the US Federal Reserve, which could come as soon as December this year, would trigger the flow of funds back to the US from emerging markets like the Philippines.

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