MANILA - Some 300,000 outsourcing jobs will soon be available as companies expand in Clark Freeport, a former US airbase that the government is promoting as an alternative to the overcrowded capital, industry players said.

The expansion is pushing through despite President Rodrigo Duterte's shift away from the US, the Philippine's biggest outsourcing client, and the victory of US president-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to bring jobs back to America.

The business process outsourcing industry is targeting up to 1.8 million jobs by the end of Duterte's term in 2022, 500,000 of which will be located outside Metro Manila, according to the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP).

“We'd like to expand that even further, of course with telecommunication, infrastructure being in place with this government pushing that part, even the rural areas, there's now rural BPO…We're excited about that,” IBPAP chairman Danilo Sebastian Reyes said.

Congestion in the capital prompted companies like Global Gateway Development Corporation to bring operations to other urban centers, said its president, Michael Sullivan.

The company is building a $5-billion 177-hectare facility in Clark that will rival call center hubs in the Bonifacio Global City.

“It was important for us coming to the Philippines to strategically identify a parcel next to the international gateways of the Philippines, and to accelerate the growth in the region,” Sullivan said.

The first phase of the project is expected to be finished by May 2017. -- reports from Pia Gutierrez, ABS-CBN News