The IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) has said its 2022 industry roadmap needs revisiting, and its own members show why. Only 12% of Philippine IT-BPM firms currently report high AI maturity, yet more than 70% expect to reach that level by 2028.
Baseline Targets Holding, But the Long View Has Shifted
The industry is targeting nearly 1.97 million full-time workers and about USD 42 billion in revenue by the end of 2026, per IBPAP's 2026 agenda, set out under President and CEO Jack Madrid. Beyond 2026 the plan is less settled. IBPAP said as early as March 2024 that it was updating its 2028 roadmap to align with AI, per a report at the time.
The 2022 roadmap projected the sector would reach USD 59 billion in revenue and employ 2.5 million people by 2028, but those figures were set before generative AI scaled commercially. IBPAP has said the spread of AI demands a strategic update to those goals.
A USD 25M Annual Bet on Workforce Transformation
The association has committed to spending at least USD 25 million per year on upskilling, a figure that reflects the scale of the challenge. Training is moving away from the communication-heavy roles on which traditional voice BPO was built, and toward AI applications, data analytics and other knowledge-intensive work that is harder to automate cheaply.
IBPAP says member companies will establish dedicated learning and development teams. The sector-wide push also runs through government channels: Project UNLAD, a PHP 740-million partnership with the Department of Information and Communications Technology and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, funnels funding into large-scale reskilling programmes for existing workers.
AI Adoption Inside the Sector
Survey data from IBPAP's own member research, presented by Jack Madrid at the 17th International IT-BPM Summit in September 2025, found that nearly half of member firms have already embedded AI into operations. The same technology that handles routine voice and data-entry work is what removes the traditional entry-level BPO role, so adoption inside the sector threatens headcount at the same time as it protects contracts.
USD 42B2026 revenue target
1.97M2026 headcount target
USD 25M+annual upskilling commitment
~70%firms targeting high AI maturity by 2028
Why the Philippines Has More at Stake Than Most
The sector accounts for roughly 8% of Philippine GDP and handles about one-fifth of global outsourcing by volume. Those numbers explain why the government is co-investing in training rather than leaving the industry to manage the transition alone. Failing to move workers up the value chain fast enough becomes a macroeconomic problem rather than an industry one.
The competitive pressure is also external. India, Vietnam, and smaller ASEAN markets are all pitching for the same AI-augmented, higher-value contracts that the Philippines is now positioning itself for. The scale that serves the Philippines well elsewhere turns into a liability in commodity voice work once clients start replacing headcount with software.
What the Revised Roadmap Will Need to Answer
When IBPAP publishes its updated figures, the key question will be whether the 2028 revenue and employment targets rise, fall, or split across scenarios. A sector that is simultaneously shedding lower-skilled roles and adding higher-skilled ones can post strong revenue growth while employing fewer people. Whether that trade-off lands as a success story or a displacement crisis depends on how quickly workers can be moved through retraining pipelines that are, at present, still being built.
Sarah Chew's VerdictWatch the headcount number
Hitting a revenue target is the easier part. What matters more is whether the Philippines can retrain workers as fast as AI is shortening the timeline, and the window for that is the next 18 months, before the gap between displaced roles and new ones becomes politically visible. The USD 25M annual commitment helps. Government co-investment through Project UNLAD will decide whether upskilling reaches the workers who need it most, including those outside large enterprise training programmes.
Update, 23 August 2026: the sections below were added after IBPAP published its revised projections.
The revised numbers arrived in July, and they go down
IBPAP published the midpoint review in mid-July.
The association now projects the industry will generate between US$43.3 billion and US$50.5 billion in revenue by 2028 and employ between 1.85 million and 2.14 million full-time workers. The 2022 roadmap had projected US$58.9 billion and 2.5 million workers.
The 2026 baseline was left alone. IBPAP still expects US$42.3 billion in revenue and about 1.96 million workers by the end of this year, which is the figure it had said was on track. Everything after 2026 was revised.
The bottom of the new employment range is below where the industry is now
The revenue revision points to slower growth, while the employment revision allows for an outright contraction, which most coverage of the release missed.
The industry expects roughly 1.96 million workers at the end of 2026. The revised 2028 range starts at 1.85 million. The low end of the association's own two-year outlook is about 110,000 jobs below the level the sector is at today, which means net contraction is now inside the range the industry considers plausible for itself.
Measured against the original roadmap the swing is larger still. The 2022 plan implied adding roughly 1.1 million jobs by 2028. The revised range runs from losing about 110,000 to adding about 180,000. That is a revision of well over a million jobs in the space of one review, in a sector that employs close to 2 per cent of the Philippine workforce.
By giving 2028 as an interval, the association concedes that it cannot yet tell how far AI will displace the voice-heavy roles the sector is built on, and it has chosen to publish that uncertainty instead of smoothing it away.
The maturity gap that prompted the review has not closed
Twelve per cent of firms reporting high AI maturity against more than 70 per cent expecting to reach it by 2028 was the gap that made the roadmap unreliable. Nothing published since narrows it.
What the revision does is put a price on it. Should most firms reach high AI maturity by 2028, revenue stays within its range while employment falls out of it, since maturity in this sector means handling more volume with fewer people. Should they fall short, the jobs hold up and the revenue range comes under threat, as the work moves to competitors who did make the change.
The association has published both ranges because it does not yet know which of the two futures the sector is in.
What the upskilling commitment is actually buying
At least US$25 million a year on upskilling, with member companies set to establish learning and development teams, is a serious commitment by association standards and a modest one against the arithmetic above.
Spread across a workforce approaching two million it is roughly thirteen dollars per worker per year. That is a statement about what association-level funding can do. It can set curriculum, standards and direction. Retraining a sector is beyond it. The Project UNLAD partnership with the Department of Information and Communications Technology and TESDA, at PHP 740 million, is the larger instrument, and it is a government one.
Enrolment numbers will not settle whether any of it is working. Movement in the 12 per cent maturity figure before the 2028 window closes would, and IBPAP has now published a scale against which that becomes visible.
Correction, 18 October 2026: An earlier version said IBPAP announced the roadmap revision at a summit on 1 June 2026 and quoted a promise of new figures "in a couple of weeks"; neither could be confirmed and both have been removed. It also said every member company already runs a learning and development team; IBPAP said members will establish them.
Sources & cross-checks
Primary
Nearshore Americas — Philippines Bets $25 Million to Shield BPO Jobs From AI Disruption
Corroborated
Corroborated
Corroborated
SunStar — IBPAP to refresh 2028 roadmap amid GenAI's adoption, 1 March 2024
Verified
USD 42B/1.97M (2026 targets) — Newsbytes.ph Jan 2026; USD 59B/2.5M (2028 roadmap targets, launched IIS 2022) — SunStar, Newsbytes.ph, pinoyleader.com; USD 25M annual upskilling + Project UNLAD PHP 740M — Nearshore Americas + Newsbytes.ph Jan 2026; 12% current high AI maturity, 70% targeting high maturity by 2028, ~50% AI-embedded — Newsbytes.ph Sept 2025 (IBPAP member survey, cited by Jack Madrid at IIS 2025); over 400 IBPAP member companies — ibpap.org/about-us + SunStar; Jack Madrid as President and CEO — ibpap.org, Newsbytes.ph, SunStar; roadmap refresh reported by SunStar, 1 March 2024. Verified 2 June 2026.
Retrospective added 23 August 2026. The revised 2028 ranges of US$43.3-50.5bn in revenue and 1.85-2.14m full-time workers, published in the mid-July midpoint review, are as reported by BusinessWorld, the Manila Times, BusinessMirror and GMA News, July 2026. The observation that the low end of the employment range sits below the 2026 figure is arithmetic on IBPAP's own published numbers.
