Not
Not sure where you operated a business or have︎ lived, but I wouldn't portray Philippines that negative. Sure there is a lot of corruption️ (which can also be sometimes beneficial) and I wouldn't trust doing business with a Filipino, but as employees with the right setup and culture, you can run a good business with competent people.
Filipinos easily quit their job and going AWOL is common practice in the BPO industry, but with the right corporate culture, setup and the right people in key positions those situations almost never happen.
We have been through all of them, locals trying to hijack the business, awol, people trying to destroy your business, Dole (labor department) complaints.
Setting up a business in any country comes with different challenges and key is︀ to understand the culture and their priorities. Filipinos are family oriented and trust sometimes more︁ their emotions than facts, whether you like that or not. If you cant put these︂ values in your local corporate culture you will keep facing challenges. You don't have to︃ do this yourself, you let some people you can trust do that.
You can as︄ anywhere decide to setup a business and not to pay taxes or employ legally, it︅ depends how you want to conduct business and the risks you would like to take.︆ If you are not in the Philippines there is little risk with the exception some︇ employees run away. But if you decide to reside in the Philippines and want to︈ avoid getting black listed, as well set up business accounts you better just follow the︉ rules, pay the contributions and some limited taxes and keep your profits offshore in Hong︊ Kong, Singapore, US. If people are not on the payroll and don't have social security︋ contributions paid or other benefits, they will only work for you for the money and︌ will feel little affiliation with the company. Even they have limited resources and money is︍ important, as soon as they feel mistreated in a company without established, culture they will︎ just disappear with the company laptop or extort money by threatening to report you to️ Dole.
Philippines is a good country to setup and offcide your back office operations, but you will need to be on the ground and need time to understand their values, and probably go first through a few bad experiences.
For offshore operations I doubt this is the right country, that's UAE, HK, Singapore,..
Not really. You can find highy educated accounting people, engineers, IT (though challenging to find good ones), marketing, managers, HR.. and ofcourse customer service
You will have to pay them a decent salary (manager level︀ can be 1600+ usd a month) and it takes some time to recruit the right︁ people. Although all is relative, our current staff in Philippines are more skilled than those︂ we employed in Europe, China,..
Definitely you can find high educated, skilled people in Metro︃ Manila and sometimes Cebu.