Innovation work moving forward should focus on the agriculture and manufacturing sectors to sustain the country’s long-term economic growth, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).
Karl Kendrick Chua, acting NEDA secretary, said during the 1st National Innovation Day virtual event yesterday while the Philippines has great potential, there is a need to change the way things are done to sustain the next level of development.
“Instead of simply assembling products and using ideas that were generated from other countries, we have to now gradually shift to a new framework where the ideas are coming from within the country, from within our human resources,” Chua said.
“We have several bright Filipinos working abroad, in other countries contributing, and I see no reason why they cannot come back and contribute. That is why this whole innovation work is very critical to us, I think it will sustain and make our structural transformation more firm,” he added.
Within that structural transformation story, Chua noted two big sectors that need a lot of help.
“The first one is agriculture, and we do not see how Philippines can be a sustainably developed country if we do not address the most basic sector, which is agriculture. And this is, I think, where innovation should prioritize,” Chua said.
“We cannot just jump from agriculture to high-skill manufacturing or services without addressing the two pillars that really sustain long term economic growth, a highly productive agricultural sector, and a manufacturing sector that takes into account the comparative advantage of the Philippines, and a big part of that is labor. So I think innovation work going forward should not skip these two important sectors,” he added.
Chua said while there is a temptation to jump to high-technology manufacturing, if these two basic points are not addressed, the country will not be able to sustain growth.
Meanwhile, Ramon Lopez, trade secretary, said in the same event innovation is the best tool to address today’s challenges.
“But to provide practical solutions for the daily problems we face, we need to collaborate and pool our collective resources to make things happen. On this first Innovation Day, we are signaling our intent to reinforce a national culture of innovation as well as of entrepreneurship,” Lopez said.
He also highlighted the passage of Republic Act No. 11293, or the Philippine Innovation Act.
“With this law in place, the Philippines can position innovation at the center of its development policies and we can now harness our innovation efforts to help our people, especially those who have been marginalized,” Lopez said.
“Furthermore, we can enable our micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to be part of the domestic and global supply chain, while catalyzing the growth of our industries and local economies. This is what we have been saying to our MSME constituents: Innovation is not limited and not a monopoly of large enterprises. In fact, for MSMEs to become large enterprises, innovation should be at the front and center of their business models,” he added.
Lopez however said achieving the objectives of this law requires an all-of-government approach.
An inter-agency council, chaired by the President, will develop the national innovation strategy that provides a roadmap and the strategies for improving innovation governance to deepen and accelerate innovation efforts.
“The law establishes an innovation fund to strengthen entrepreneurship and enterprises engaged in developing innovative solutions benefiting the poor and the marginalized,” Lopez said.
He said innovation centers would also be established to support collaborative research and development, and extension initiatives among academic or educational institutions, research, development and engineering centers, and business.
“As we foster the creativity, collaboration, and risk-taking mindset that are the basic strands of the innovation culture, we will empower an entire nation that is ready to produce value-added solutions to the world,” Lopez said.
“This, in turn, would produce more innovative MSMEs that can help our country build back better towards a more hopeful post-pandemic future,” he added.
