Government to adopt technology business incubation program

MANILA, Philippines - The government will aggressively adopt the technology business incubation (TBI) program to catch up with its neighbors that have taken greater strides in developing their start-up companies.

The TBI program started in early 1990s when it established the first technology business incubators mostly in the University of the Philippines (UP) campuses in Diliman, Los Baños and Miag-ao in Iloilo province.

“The sad thing is that after we have initiated the program, there was no sustained investment and initiative. While the Philippines was one of the countries here in Asia that went first into technology business incubation, there was no sustained effort,” Science and Technology Undersecretary Fortunato dela Pena lamented.

As a result, the country has remained at low level of less than 10 in terms of the number of business incubators by the end of year 2000.

This was much lower compared to some neighboring countries which have already reached the 100 level mark, he pointed out in a forum, attributing this to their investments poured into technology business incubation.

Recognizing this fact, dela Peña said that already, a consortium of universities, the private sector and the local government sector is amenable to establishing incubators that will nurture start-up companies who are into innovations.

Apart from this, he said the government is undertaking another measure to stimulate the innovation environment in the country. 

Dela Peña said a company is entitled to incentives even beyond the original period if it invests capital and hire more people.

“But this time they added as a criterion that which can enable a company to receive incentives when it is able to show the organizations involved that it has developed innovations as evidenced by patents approved here in the Philippines,” he noted.

Moreover, dela Peña said they are investing more in human capital which is a key factor in innovation generation.

The DOST is running a research and development for technology program which provides scholarships for graduate studies in engineering and science and technology and pursues research studies for technological advancement.

The program involves a consortium of universities that offer mature engineering graduate courses including the Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, Mapua Institute of Technology, the Central Luzon State University, San Carlos University, the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology, the University of the Philippines-Diliman and UP Los Baños.

Dela Peña said such program hopes to increase the number of people involved in research development.

He said the Philippines has the lowest statistics of scientific manpower per million population engaged in research development compared at least with the original members of ASEAN, excluding Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

“This is a massive development program and we are happy to report that they are meeting their targets in terms of the numbers, in terms of quality and in terms of research output,” he added.