My colleagues and fellow members of the Phil. Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research & Development (PCIEERD) Governing Council. Friends and partners from the industries, the Science & Technology community, and the academe, good morning!
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) welcomes this move for closer collaboration with the other departments under the Convergence Program. While we do collaborate on a lot of projects and activities, we highly appreciate this initiative by DOST-PCIEERD to implement and translate research outputs into initiatives and projects that would help provide solutions to the country’s challenges, as well as strengthen the country’s technology adoption towards Industry 4.0 and the better normal.
With the Convergence Program, we will now have a shared platform to significantly address some of the needs and concerns along the priority areas of the member agencies. DTI and DOST, together with our other partners from the government, the industry and the academe, can take advantage of this platform to push for more R&D (research and development activities geared towards Industry 4.0.
This also supports DTI’s new Industrial Policy, our Inclusive Innovation Industrial Strategy (i3s) which aims to grow innovative and globally competitive manufacturing, agriculture, and services. Innovation is at the core of our strategic policies and programs, and we aim to have a modernized and integrated industrial capacity, where Philippine high-value products and services are integrated into global value chains.
With R&D, we can advance the industrial revolution of the 21st century or Industry 4.0 in the country. New technologies and innovation arising from Industry 4.0 would spur the development of new production techniques and business models, and even products that would transform global production systems, create new, more distributed and connected value chains, and could trigger selective reshoring and nearshoring, things that we at the DTI are keen working on.
We particularly look forward to our collaboration in those areas identified under the Convergence Program, such as the establishment of an integrated circuit (IC) design lab and lab-scale wafer fabrication facility that would help enrich our electronics sector and develop capacities in IC design.
Our Semiconductor and Electronics industry remains to be the top contributor to our country’s total exports accounting for around 62% or USD39.7-B in 2020, and the third largest contributor to the country’s manufacturing gross value added (GVA) accounting for 10.8% of the total manufacturing GVA. To remain competitive, we must keep developing talents and capabilities for this sector, including in IC design.
We also look forward to our collaboration for the development of the PPE ecosystem that is very timely as we combat the COVID-19, as well as the assistance for the Start-up Ecosystem, from the development of their products/services to its commercialization.
Other areas of collaboration under the Convergence Program include the development of the creative industry, which also to us in the industry of the future.
Halal development, particularly the promotion of Halal products and the adoption of Halal Assurance System, the establishment of food innovation centers, development of the downstream industry for the mineral sector, the conduct of environment R&D, incentives for technology transfer, the continued protection of intellectual property which we are already doing together with IPOPHL, the establishment of S&T Parks, the implementation of the Regional Consortia Program, and of course, the promotion of entrepreneurship.
Once again, let me express DTI’s whole-hearted support to this initiative by DOST-PCIEERD for an inter-agency collaboration to pursue R&D-based innovation. As President Rodrigo Duterte had said, “The Filipino is educated, creative, and resilient. Innovation is our big push. This will keep our country on the growth path for decades to come.”
Maraming salamat at mabuhay po kayo! ♦
Date of Release: 18 October 2021