DTI: PH creative industries seen to grow by double-digit

The country’s creative industries are poised for robust growth as the government lines up initiatives to spur the sector’s development, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said Thursday.

“Considering all our efforts to level up, upgrade, and improve the sector and all the programs being implemented by the DTI together with other government agencies whose purpose is to promote creative industries… estimates based on our forecast, what we are seeing is double-digit growth for creative industries in the next three years,” DTI Undersecretary for Competitiveness and Innovation Rafaelita Aldaba told reporters at the sidelines of the Philippine Creative Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Congress in Manila.

Aldaba defined creative industries as “businesses that can make money from things like art, culture, and innovation.”

“This industries rely on people’s creativity, skills, and talents to produce unique goods and services and also create jobs and wealth by using intellectual property like copyrights and patents,” she said.

The DTI official said that the country’s creative sector contributed 7.3% to the economy amounting to P1.6 trillion in 2022.

“The latest estimates from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that the Philippine creative industries generated a total of 6.98 million employment,” Aldaba said.

“The sector also plays a significant role in Philippine trade with creative goods and services amounting to $7 billion which was 6.6% of our trade,” she said, noting that the country also ranked first in ASEAN in terms of creative services exports.

“All these show that the Philippines' creative industries are not just about creativity, they are about jobs, businesses, and economic growth. They preserve our cultural heritage and shape our future. They are vital for our economy, contributing significantly to our gross domestic product, creating jobs, and fueling innovation,” she added.

The DTI is implementing the Creative Economy Strategy of the Philippines or CREST PH—a holistic approach to improving the competitiveness of the creative industries, facilitating the development and promotion of creative goods exports, and assisting creative firms in accessing the global market.

Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual, for his part, said digitalization will be the ultimate solution to address constraints in the ease of doing business.

“The ultimate solution is digitalization and the DICT (Department of Information and Communications Technology) is doing the work on that with the help of other national government agencies and local governments,” Pascual said.

To accurately measure the contributions of the creative sector to the economy, the DTI is working together with the Philippine Statistics Authority to improve ‘yung data collection,” according to Aldaba.

“Because it is very broad and there could be issues pertaining to overlaps so what we’re trying to do now is really to come up with a framework to estimate in a more robust way the contribution of the creative sector,” she said. —VAL, GMA Integrated News