ELECTRONICS SECTOR KEY TO VIBRANT RP ECONOMY - ANGARA

With the country reaching P102.5 billion worth of investments in the local semiconductor and electronics industry last year, Senator Edgardo J. Angara today said deeper investments in R&D would reinforce the country's electronics sector and help boost the country's earnings.

"Lets take advantage of the increasing demand for electronics products around the world by investing in research and development (R&D) and improve the country's capability to innovate by providing infrastructure to support our own homegrown sector," said Angara chairman of the Senate committee of science and technology, and Congressional Commission on Science and Technology and Engineering (COMSTE).

According to Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Inc (Seipi), investments last year came from 100 companies. These investments are expected to generate 24,552 new direct jobs and the industry expressed its desire to more than double the country's exports within six years, from $22 billion in 2009 to at least $50 billion in 2016.

Meanwhile, Angara through COMSTE endorses that government use the Engineering Research and Development for Technology (ERDT) as vehicles to generate programs to increase the numbers of Researchers, Scientists, and Engineers in our country (RSEs).

The ERDT is a consortium of 7 schools including UP-Diliman, Ateneo de Manila, De La Salle, Mapua Institute of Technology, CLSU, MSU, and the University of San Carlos. This consortium aims to increase the numbers RSEs with advanced degrees needed to make S&T work for Filipinos: from disaster mitigation to poverty alleviation, from agriculture to semiconductor industries; ensure a sustainable environment and affordable energy for the future.

"We are also setting up the Philippine Industrial R&D Institute, which includes Advanced Technical Training. It will be the lynchpin of invigorating our local electronics and semiconductor sector. This R&D institute will be patterned after Taiwan's prestigious Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). Both Taiwan and Singapore have used this strategy: boosting their electronics and semiconductor sector to shift to a high value-added industrial growth and jumpstart their economic development," said Angara.