Senator urges culture of innovation to boost economic competitiveness » Manila Bulletin News

 

By Mario Casayuran

Senator Sherwin T. Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate economic affairs committee, asked on Thursday the Duterte administration to develop a culture of innovation in order to boost the country’s economic competitiveness.

Gatchalian made the call after the World Economic Forum (WEF) issued its latest Global Competitiveness Report which ranked the Philippines 56th out of 140 economies.

While the country’s ranking improved by 12 notches from 68th in 2017, Gatchalian pointed out that implementing certain policy reforms would help boost the country’s economic competitiveness even further.

He said that the improvement of the Philippines’ ranking in the latest Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum shows that the government’s initiatives to improve the ease of doing business have been working.

“In fact, this year, President Duterte signed into law the Ease of Doing Business Act of 2018 Republic Act No. 11032), which has helped build a more business-friendly environment in the Philippines,” he pointed out.

“The challenge for the government now is to sustain these gains and improve our ranking even further. The government needs to continue pursuing measures that will foster a more productive business environment for MSMEs and spur growth in key domestic industries,” he pointed out.

Citing the latest WEF report, Gatchalian noted that the Philippines continues to trail behind Singapore (2nd), Malaysia (25th), Thailand (38th) and Indonesia (45th) in the Southeast Asian region.

The WEF report measures a country’s competitiveness using a set of criteria that determine level of productivity.

It highlighted that the Philippines’ strength rests in its market size (32nd), labor market (36th), financial system (39th) and business dynamism (39th).

On the other hand, the same report noted that the Philippines still needs to fix and enhance its institutions (101st), health (101st), and infrastructure (92nd), as well as address the country’s weakness in terms of actual innovation in the economy (67th).

Gatchalian said that the points raised by the WEF might be addressed with the passage of measures that would level the playing field for businesses and startups and entice a sharp increase in foreign direct investment (FDI).

For this reason, Gatchalian urged the House of Representatives to pass the counterpart measure to the Philippine Innovation Act (Senate Bill 1355), which aims to establish a resilient national culture of innovation that will boost the productivity of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

Gatchalian also renewed his call for the removal of anti-competitive restrictions on foreign investments, pointing to key amendatory measures he has filed to erase these restrictions from key economic laws such as the Public Services Act and the Retail Trade Liberalization Act.