The Philippine digital economy is expected to rise exponentially with the artificial intelligence (AI) contributing $92 billion by 2030 on the country’s robust startup ecosystem fueled by young tech savvy population, according to a study.

In a presentation at the 2nd Quarter General Membership Meeting of the Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc., Trade and Industry Undersecretary Rafaelita M. Aldaba said the 2021 Startup Genome report recognized the Philippines as top 20 global ecosystem in affordable talent.

According to the report, the Philippine digital economy is expected to generate $25 billion in revenues by 2025 from $17 billion in 2021. AI alone is expected to become a $92 billion industry by 2030. “That's 12% of our GDP by 2030,” she pointed out.

According to Aldaba the country’s digital transformation is fueled by young tech savvy population noting that many Filipino startups even provided solutions to help governance in addressing pandemic issues.

For instance, she emphasized that the Philippine startup ecosystem is composed of more than 700 startups, 40 plus venture capitalists, over 50 angel investors, 35 incubators and accelerators, and more than 200 co-working space.

“The acceleration of digital transformation paved the way for the growth of the digital economy in the Philippines,” she said.

With this, Aldaba said the DTI continues to support the transition of enterprises into digital under its Industry 4.0 and Digital Transformation services.

“Hence, we continue to build and support the creation of a robust startup ecosystem as this would serve as the muscle of our digital transformation,” she said.

The Philippines also remained resilient even during the pandemic. Aldaba said that despite the pandemic, the Global Innovation Index, which tracks innovation performance, showed the Philippines slipped by only one notch to 51st ranking in 2021 from 50th in 2020. This means the Philippines was once again cited as an innovation achiever for the third time.

Even prior to the pandemic, the DTI has been working to help in the digital transformation of industries. In 2019, the agency conducted a survey on the other technology utilization of manufacturing companies in the Philippines.

The survey results showed that, in general, the manufacturing industry has low technology utilization with most companies are still transitioning from industry 2.0 to industry 3.0 by type of enterprises, MSMEs had very low technology utilization.

For instance, 53 percent of the companies that interviewed, control and track their manufacturing activities manually through a paper based system; 44 percent with no maintenance systems; 46 percent with no cybersecurity procedures; and, 58 percent with no manufacturing equipment connected to the network.