Digital products and services to drive 40% of PHL GDP by 2021 —Microsoft

Digital products and services are going to be the main drivers of Philippine economic growth in the coming years and account for as much as 40 percent of economic growth by 2021, a research commissioned by Microsoft showed.

The paper called “Unlocking the Economic Impact of Digital Transformation in Asia Pacific” was officially released to the media in Parañaque City on Thursday.

It noted that the products and services will be created directly by digital technologies such as artificial intelligence.

“Within the next four years, we expect to see approximately 40 percent of the Philippines’ GDP to be derived from digital products and services,” Microsoft Philippines managing director Hans Bayaborda said.

Digital transformation is also expected to add an estimated $8 billion to the Philippine gross domestic product (GDP), and increase the growth rate by 0.4 percent annually.

“It’s really on a fast track ... The Department of ICT has a cloud-first policy now making sure that government agencies are using this cloud policy to make sure that costs are being brought down,” Bayaborda noted.

“At the private sector, a lot of the banking industry is looking at artificial intelligence,” he said.

The same research showed that in 2017, only 3 percent of the country’s economic growth was derived from digital products. It is now expected to reach 18 percent this year alone.

“The Philippines is clearly on the digital transformation fast track,” Bayaborda said, noting that several companies in the Philippines have already been digitizing operations.

Dominant telecommunications companies Globe Telecom Inc. and PLDT Inc. have  started to digitize payments systems with subscribers now able to pay using quick response (QR) codes.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) also targets 20 percent of all transactions in the country to be digital by 2020.

It has signed measures enabling the e-commerce sector to accommodate more consumers and serve more payment transactions across the country.

Microsoft cited Union Bank of the Philippines as digital transformation leader. The bank recently partnered with Visa Inc. to fast track cross-border bank-to-bank payments. —VDS, GMA News