Marcos: Philippines should compete with neighbors on connectivity, digitalization

President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. said Tuesday that the Philippines should compete with its neighbor countries when it comes to connectivity and digitalization.

During the Telco Summit in Pasay City, Marcos said the country's connectivity rate was "still pretty low." He stressed that the Philippines should be "at the very least at the same level of digitalization" as to other nations in Asia.

"We are still below 70 percent and that’s not good enough, especially for an archipelagic country such as ours where connectivity is exceedingly important because we have many isolated communities who need some form of contact, some form of communication with the rest of the country, with the rest of the world," Marcos said.

"When I look around when I was in ASEAN and APEC, I saw that we are not too badly off but we could do so much better. And if we are to compete properly with our neighbors and that time will come and it is coming now very, very quickly upon us, that time will – when that time comes, we will have to compete with our neighbor countries because the region is still going to be -- in my estimation, in my view, this region is still going be the driver of the global economy as soon as things 'normalize,'" he added.

Marcos then urged relevant government agencies, as well as private sector partners, "to ensure that these efforts will be implemented, they will be strengthened, and translated into a more efficient delivery of government services."

"Our digital infrastructure and services will definitely change – has already changed the way we experience the world around us. It has changed everything. It has changed -- the pandemic changed everything and the internet changed right along with it," said the President.

"We work differently, we shop differently. I mean, I don’t need to repeat all of that. You all know it. You experienced it all yourselves," he added.

Marcos also said the digitalization process would be a very important part of improving the ease of doing business.

"This will simplify everything that we do with – in the business of government as we try to process and we try to serve the public in giving them all the services that are necessary and making it easy for them to avail of those services," Marcos said. — DVM, GMA Integrated News