DTI to institutionalize Industry Development Council

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Trade and Industry wants to institutionalize the Industry Development Council so succeeding administrations would not be able to hamper improvements being undertaken to upgrade industries.

 “There’s already a draft executive order submitted to Malacanang,” Trade assistant secretary Rafaela Aldaba said.

This is only one of the implementation challenges of the country’s new industrial policy which was introduced to create more and better jobs, and reduce poverty at the same time.

 “We need to strengthen our institutional coordination, there are a lot of agencies with whom DTI has to coordinate with for the implementation of our industrial policies,” Aldaba said.

 “Of course, we know all the different agencies have varying mandates. So how to reconcile these varying mandates is truly a challenge for us,” she continued.

The new industrial policy, meant to improve competitiveness and productivity, tasks the government to create a proper environment for private sector development.

The phases of development of the industries such as manufacturing, agribusiness, and services until 2025 have been planned under this new policy.

But Aldaba stressed the creation of programs under the industrial policies remains a difficult task for regulators and concerned agencies as measures should be specific to one industry.

 “In crafting our industry support programs, there is no one-size fits all approach. We need to fully understand each industry in order to come up with strategic measures so this would enable us to tailor the measures to specific circumstances,” Aldaba said.

At the same time, she noted there should be focus on small businesses which need all the support they can get in terms of financing and access to technology.

 “We need to create more space for our micro, small and medium enterprises because up to now, it’s still the large enterprises that control bulk of the value-added services and the employment,” Aldaba said.

 “For the MSMEs, most of the issues are access to financing and access to technology that we need to address,” she said.