As-delivered Opening Remarks of NEDA Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan at the National Innovation Agenda and Strategy Document 2023-2032 Launching Event: Reshaping the Future, Advancing Filipinnovation
I am pleased to welcome you to today’s launch of the National Innovation Agenda and Strategy Document or the Strategy Document for 2023 to 2032. Thank you for sharing your valuable time with us as we unveil this critical document, which lays out our 10-year vision and long-term goals and strategies for improving our country’s innovation governance.
This Strategy Document was formed following a collaborative and forward-looking approach. It was co-created with our innovation partners from the academe, industry, and government to ensure that it responds to the needs of all innovation actors, including scientists, engineers, researchers, product designers, marketing specialists, and entrepreneurs. Our overall goal is to empower our innovation actors, particularly our startups and MSMEs, so that they may become more productive, more resilient, and more competitive in navigating the ever-changing and uncertain demands of the global market and amid the challenges they face within our current innovation ecosystem.
In today’s launch, we welcome the Strategy Document’s completion and reaffirm our commitment to prioritizing and integrating the innovation agenda into the heart of our development plans. The Strategy Document is aligned with the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028, or the PDP, which identifies the establishment of a dynamic innovation ecosystem as among the PDP’s cross-cutting strategies. The very theme of our event today signifies our envisioned future where our citizens can organically transform their knowledge and novel ideas into market-driven, market-oriented, and market-valued innovative products or services. The theme further underscores the need to embrace fresh ideas, cutting-edge technologies, and collaborative efforts to propel Filipino society toward our attainment of the country’s long-term and collective aspiration of a matatag, maginhawa, at panatag na buhay para sa lahat, as embodied in the AmBisyon Natin 2040.
The Strategy Document details the strategies on how we can improve our innovation ecosystem by (1) formulating conducive policies for science, technology, and innovation; (2) improving and establishing innovation infrastructures; and (3) implementing programs, including financing, for our innovators.
As the highest innovation policy coordinating body, the National Innovation Council or the NIC is committed to carrying out these strategies. As the NIC Chairperson, the President has been actively leading the Council’s policies and initiatives, affirming the importance of innovation in attaining rapid, sustained, and inclusive economic growth that would support Filipinos’ desired standard of living.
As we proceed with today’s event, allow me to encourage everyone here today, all of us innovation actors, to utilize this important document as a guiding strategy framework for building a dynamic innovation ecosystem that fosters, embraces, and exudes the culture of true Filipinnovation. Let us be fearless and inspired: through our concerted efforts, we can forge and develop a stronger and more connected innovation ecosystem to achieve a “Smart and Innovative Philippines.”
Let us reshape our future together by advancing Filipinnovation.
Once again, good day to all, and thank you for coming. May we have a wonderful celebration ahead.
