With the growing popularity of outsourcing — brought about by the need for companies to improve efficiencies by ridding themselves of unnecessary costs — AsiaPro has been a stable supplier of such labor pool recruiting its members from the ranks of the underemployed or contractual pool of its client/companies.

AsiaPro basically convinces the companies on the benefits of making them absorb the administrative cost and training of the contractual (5 to 6 months) laborers, who in turn become members of AsiaPro Cooperative.

"We normally benchmark the rates we charge our clients against the best available rates here and abroad plus a mark up of 12 to 13 percent. Our services might be higher at first glance for the companies but when they see how their productivity and revenues improve after they accept our offer, they normally do not mind it anymore," AsiaPro Founder Leo Parma told Business Agenda.

With solid experience and training in human resources, Parma founded AsiaPro in 1999 with a dozen business clients and 66 members from the ranks of contractual/underemployed laborers.

Now, AsiaPro has 139 clients with 18,500 members, each of them treated as owners of the company with entitlements to regular employee benefits (SSS, Philhealth and others) plus insurance, medical benefits and patronage refunds (dividends) and the equivalent of 13th month pay in December.

Expectedly, its rapid growth in clients and membership base brings uneasiness on the local suppliers of contractual laborers and several manning agencies, which in turn have been hitting AsiaPro in the media.

"By enlisting them as our members and company owners, we are able to give them job security (since they can be moved to other companies where their skills can be used) while they enjoy the benefits of being owners of the company during general membership meetings," Parma said.

AsiaPro’s major clients are: Stanfilco in Mindanao for the banana operations of Dole; the Ayala Group; Dupont Pioneer HiBred; East West Seeds; Sanyo; Honda Cars; Wyeth; Intercon, Oakwood, Discovery Group; Yellow Cab; JVC, Canon, Manila Peninsula, Holiday Inn; Diamond Hotel, Legenda Suites, Holiday Inn and several others.

In 2005, AsiaPro’s service revenues reached a net of P28 million which enabled it to declare 70 percent patronage refunds to all members amounting to P24 million, paid after the March general membership meeting.

And since the contractual laborers are now regularly paid worker/members of AsiaPro, they were able to remit to the government (in SSS, Philhealth and others) a total of P122 million in 2005, which they could not have done had they continued to be underemployed or contractual laborers, Parma said.

By late next year or 2008 at the latest, AsiaPro intends to enter the global manpower services business but not as a "one time" deployer and recruiter of laborers for overseas placement but as an agency that would "take care of its members abroad by setting up a permanent desk that will attend to their needs and those of the clients," said Edmundo Castañeda, AsiaPro chairman.

Already, AsiaPro has been meeting with officers of the American Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Spanish embassy to flesh out how they could fill the demand in these respective countries for skilled labor coming from its membership.

In Spain, for instance, there is big demand for apple and strawberry pickers which has been there for a long time but which the Philippine placement agencies never addressed for one reason or another, Castañeda said.

"With the reiteration made recently by the Spanish officials with President Arroyo, we feel we can meet this demand (from the ranks of our farmer members in Mindanao) with regularity and quality service," Castañeda said.