Press Release
December 6, 2008

ANGARA EYES EFFECTIVE COMMERCIALIZATION OF RP'S R&D EFFORTS TO HURDLE THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

Senator Edgardo J. Angara today said that the country should improve its process of transferring and commercializing the results of research and development (R&D) in order to hurdle the challenges of the global financial crisis.

"We should address the weakest link in our innovation system, which is technology transfer, by creating a policy environment that can attract strong support from public and private sectors. In many developed countries, technology transfer and innovation policy are very much at the center of their policies on economic development," said Angara who chairs the Senate Committee on Science and Technology.

He added, "The strong productivity growth recorded in the United States, Japan, European countries and recently India was underpinned by technological innovations that emanated from high-quality scientific research institutions."

According to the 2006-2007 Global Competitiveness Report, the Philippines is ranked 71st out of 125 countries in terms of technological readiness or ability to adopt technologies from home or abroad to enhance the productivity of its industries. This is in contrast with the high rankings of our Asian neighbors like Singapore (2nd), Hong Kong (13th), Korea (18th), Japan (19th), Malaysia (28th) and Thailand (48th).

In the area of innovation or the ability to produce brand new technologies, the country ranks a dismal 79th. Compared to emerging innovation powerhouses in the ASEAN like Singapore (9th), Malaysia (21st), Indonesia (37th) and Thailand (33rd), the Philippines clearly has a lot of catching up to do in terms of innovation.

In order to address this, Angara initiated a Research and Development Congress to be attended by government agencies with R&D funds and State Universities and Colleges (SUCs). One of the topics to be tackled in the Congress is how to effectively commercialize research efforts.

"Our SUCs should also be able to convert their research projects into commercial products. In this manner, we can have an opportunity wherein our SUCs, as an institution of learning, can tie up with private sector which can help us augment our resources in these tough times of crisis," he added.

Angara also filed a Technology Transfer bill which hopes to foster a stronger and closer private-public collaboration or closer relationship to industry and provide the framework that will promote coordination, integration and harmonization of all technology transfer efforts by various agencies in the country. This seeks to resolve the issues on technology ownership, and provide the institutional mechanism for developing a creative technology transfer capability.

The bill underscores the importance of technology transfer as an engine to move the country forward and establishes the scheme that will make possible the emergence of the Philippines as another ASEAN innovation powerhouse.

Agencies endorsing the bill includes: Departments of Science and Technology, Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources, Health, Trade and Industry, and Interior and Local Governments, Commission on Higher Education, and Intellectual Property Philippines.

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