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By Edward Deveza, MS; Henry Ramos, Ph. D. and
Giovanni Tapang, Ph. D., Special To The Manila Times
Without industrialization there can be no true
science and technology development.
The industries present in the Philippines are
only light manufacturing, construction, public utility and mining
enterprises dependent on imported equipment and raw materials. Most
of these are paid for by the foreign exchange earnings of
raw-material export and foreign loans. Despite government claims,
assembly plants of semiconductor manufacturers and those industries
that involve fringe processing do not, in general, generate
technology transfer.
Until now, the country does not have an industry
for capital goods. Heavy and basic industries are non-existent,
except for copper processing. Machine tool industry, basic metal and
chemical industries, engineering industries are yet to be
established.
Existing industries merely reprocess components
from abroad and are wholly dependent on technologies from advanced
countries. Vital industries such as power, oil and mining have been
liberalized and deregulated.
The economy remains dominated by a few families
with huge landholdings and big businesses. Half of the corporate
capital is concentrated in the hands of only 10 families.
The domination of our economy primarily by the
US and its main local partners, the comprador big bourgeoisie and
landlords, impedes the building and development of our national
industries. It is of course not to their interest to change the
largely backward agrarian production systems and develop the local
industries, technologies and products.
We are therefore not surprised that the past and
present administrations in the Philippines are also disinterested in
pursuing a genuine industrialization program, much less allocate an
adequate budget for science and technology development beyond the
usual token amounts.
Government funding for S&T institutions
remains inadequate. The private sector and industries have very
little participation in S&T activities.
Technologies used in industries are focused only
on assembly and testing, product innovation from other countries’
existing products and improving management strategies.
Technologies are mostly imported. The minimal
R&D expenditures of private firms in the country reflect the
fact that foreign capital in the country does not improve on nor use
the full capabilities of science and technology personnel they
employ. The attraction for these large firms is in the cheap labor
and raw materials available in the country. In general, technology
transfer does not happen.
The meager R&D activities result in the lack
of opportunities for our S&T professionals. Government S&T
institutions could not employ all of them while the lack of
industrialization creates no demand for research engineers and
physical scientists. Thus, most of them are forced to seek
employment abroad, contributing to the “brain drain” phenomena.
In 1998, about 25 percent of deployed OFWs abroad are professionals
and technical workers. This has grown enormously in 2008.
Many Filipino scientists who have opted to stay
in the country, meanwhile, face low budget allocations for their
researches, inadequate compensation, and lack of resources and a
host of other problems. Still, a lot of them produce research
publications that are at par with those in other countries.
While these commendable efforts create a sense
of self-reliance because of the minimal government support, these
are more often than not the specialized rather than the general type
of research activities done in most research institutions. Worse,
the government has not used these results nor directed their
research for the country’s needs.
The government’s strategic plans on S&T
are not geared towards developing a truly self-reliant economy.
These plans have been tailored for the export-oriented and
import-dependent economic model. Thus, the government’s strategic
plan does not contain efforts to build and strengthen
industrialization for domestic production. Instead, it further
weakens domestic production through its policy and program of
opening national industries to foreign corporations and further
deregulating critical base industries.
Efforts to build and improve packaging
technologies also fit the government thrust of agricultural
production for exports. Meanwhile, the training of data-savvy,
English-speaking “IT” experts fulfills the requirements of
offshore call centers but does nothing to upgrade actual skilled
production for our local IT needs. Information and communications
technology, with the spread of mobile phones and Internet, is
largely confined to urban centers.
To further exacerbate the situation, the
government has never been serious in realizing its policy
pronouncements in science and technology as reflected in the steady
decrease in budgetary allocations for the DOST and other R&D
institutions.
To this day, there is little or no technology
transfer to the Philippines from its international trade partners.
Most technologies being used in the existing
manufacturing/industrial sector in the country today are owned by
foreign companies. Most of the patents granted in the country are of
foreign origin.
Intellectual property rights laws embraced by
the Philippines by large do not protect local scientific endeavors
but rather hinder the country in accessing foreign technologies
needed for its development.
International trade policies supported and
adopted by the Philippine government also do not support the
development of local industries. After years of implementing “Free
Trade Globalization” under the WTO, the country continues to be
driven to export more raw and semi-processed materials because of
the undeveloped manufacturing systems and the continued dumping of
finished goods by industrial countries—to the detriment of course
of local production.
Agriculture in the country is still not
mechanized. Mechanization is undertaken only by big plantations.
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