DEVELOPING PH'S START-UPS
THE Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Davao hopes that the recently-approved Senate Bill 1532 will be able to support, not only the domestic market, but the international market as well.
On May 16, the Senate passed on third and final reading the Senate Bill No. 1532 also known as the “Act Promoting Benefits and Programs to strengthen, promote, and develop the Philippine Start-Up Ecosystem” and was authored by Senator Paolo Benigno Aquino IV.
The bill targets to provide benefits and incentives in the form of waived application fees, refund of fees for permits and certifications, and expedited processing of permits and certificates. Included also in the bill is a provision of P10-billion Innovative Startup Venture Fund that the entrepreneurs can apply for.
“Anything that helps start-ups like these legislations is always good. So we welcome the approved bill in the Senate side. We hope that the counterpart bill in the House of Representatives will also be approved so that this can be signed into law,” said ICT Davao president lawyer Samuel Matunog in a phone interview.
However, Matunog would also want the government to note that the start-up has a very high failure rate. He said that about 70 percent of those venturing into start-up, including different inventions, fail. Matunog added this failure does not necessarily mean that the inventions are not innovative but it is primarily because of the type of competition that they have.
“There must be an objective way to gauge the viability of these start-up ideas and entrepreneurs so my suggestion, since we already have standards on how to gauge and determine which projects should be supported, is that we should just apply this process,” he said.
He added he hopes that start-up ideas that will be supported by this bill will be focused on those that can scale worldwide and have wider market demand. This, he said, is also to allow the inventor to earn and to market his or her start-up in other countries and not just in the Philippines.
“We have to know, early on, which market are they trying to serve? Is it the domestic market only? The international market or segments only of the international market?” Matunog said.
Aside from this, he also hopes that the attention and assistance now given to the startup ecosystem will also consider those in the regional level as he believes there are also potential and promising ideas in the regions.