Amid heavy losses due to the pandemic, the Philippine creative industry has the potential to become the next big thing in outsourcing.
Creative sectors registered declines in revenues of a low 20 percent to a high of 90 percent in 2020 due to the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, according to Paolo Mercado, president of the Creative Economy Council of the Philippines.
The pandemic also caused the Philippine creative industry’s momentum to become the next outsourcing service to the global market.
But at the Creative Futures 2021 forum held virtually yesterday Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez expressed hope the creative industry sector can very well be the next service industry-winner, next to business process outsourcing.
Mercado in his presentation in the same forum, said sectors worst hit by the pandemic are those that depend on in-person and large crowds such as cinema-based film; performing arts, concerts and live events and; heritage sites and museums, folk arts and crafts. These three sectors recorded 85 to 90 percent plunge in revenues in 2020 from 2019.
Television and radio recorded 50 percent decline in revenues partly due to the shutdown of ABS-CBN.
Mercado said traditional advertising in TV, radio, print and outdoor incurred 30 to 50 percent drop in revenues.
Mercado said sectors that produce digital content and provide digital services were not as affected.
He said while at the start of the lockdowns these sectors had to adjust to work-from-home and bandwidth challenges, they quickly recovered by the second half with some registering growth.
Software , animation and game development as well as digital marketing, digital advertising, web and graphic design registered a relatively smaller drop in revenues of 20 to 30 percent.Irma Isip
“Creative industries suffered very heavy losses because a lot of the behavioral restrictions, and the safety protocols, affected the way people consume creative work. Cinemas, theaters were closed, concerts were not possible … crafts and folk arts, could not be sold and museums had lost visitors,” Mercado said.
Mercado said prior to the pandemic, one of the emerging potential for the Philippines was online creative freelancing, with about 1.3 to 1.5 million Filipinos on international online platforms, contributing freelancing work, majority of which was creative work, such as web design, multimedia content, editing, and other such work “That would have become the next wave of outsourcing in the Philippines,” he added.
While the Philippines was lagging a bit behind in Asean in exports of creative goods and services, fifth in the region at $4.1 billion in 2019, it was number one in terms of the creative services sector at $3.2 billion, doiing more outsourcing work than Singapore or Thailand.
In his speech, Lopez said creative industries numbered 305,070 establishments or 30.5 percent of total establishments in the country last year, many of which were affected by the series of community quarantine lockdowns.
Before the pandemic, Lopez said,, the industries provided 4.8 million jobs or 11.3 percent of total employment as of 2019.
