(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-03-20 13:50

MANILA - The Philippine Software Industry Association is forming a consortium that will market Philippine-made software overseas, media reports said on Thursday.

Industry officials said the consortium is going to an outsourcing forum in New York this July with hopes of making some deals, Philippine TV network ABS-CBN reported.

"This is a coming together of software companies to form a consortium of smaller software developers in the country so they can sell bigger," said Rosario Gruet, a director of the Philippine Software Industry Association.

"We are building an inventory of skills that we can showcase abroad. We want to work together instead of compete with one another," she said.

Gruet said the association is working closely with the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry to sell Filipino software initially as a service, especially with the popularity of offshoring and outsourcing.

The Philippine Software Industry Association's combined revenues at about 300 million US dollars in 2007. The group has 110 members at present.

According to a report by the Business Process Association of the Philippines, the software development industry is one of the top earners in the offshoring and outsourcing sector, raking in revenues of 423 million dollars last year, up 56 percent from 2006.

This was largely accounted for by key players Accenture, Headstrong, Microsoft, IBM Solutions, Jupiter Systems, Oracle, ADTX Solutions, TrendMicro, Gurango, Intel, etc.

There are 120 software development companies in the country that employ nearly 30,000 IT professionals.

For 2007, the offshoring and outsourcing sector recorded a total of 4.88 billion dollars in revenues, higher than the 3.3 billion dollars it had in 2006.

It is on track to reaching its goal of 13 billion dollars in revenues by 2010, according to the report.