Pres. Rodrigo Duterte signed into law on Monday, March 21, Republic Act 11659 or the amendments to the Public Service Act (PSA), which allows full foreign ownership in key sectors including telecommunications, railways, airports, and shipping.
The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said it will launch on April 21 the National Innovation Agenda and the AmBisyon e-Village, an online innovation platform.
NEDA director-general Karl Chua said there had been some improvements in the country's broadband performance, but the Philippines can do better as it currently ranks 63 out of 178 countries in terms of broadband speed.
Socio-economic Planning secretary Karl Chua cited the importance of easing the restrictions on foreign ownerships, especially telecom and transport, that would help the Philippines attract more investments and create more and better jobs that are crucial to accelerating the country’s economic recovery.
The NEDA said its prioritization of technology, innovation, use of data science, digital information, innovative business processes, knowledge management, and human resource have profoundly transformed the agency.
Meanwhile, state-run Land Bank of the Philippines said it has onboarded 5.3 million unbanked PhilSys registrants for their own transaction accounts through account opening booths at select PhilSys co-location areas nationwide.
The BSP said it is also boosting whole-of-government efforts to diversify the broadband market so that Filipinos across the country can have affordable Internet connectivity and digital financial services available to them.
NEDA director-general Karl Chua said he saw the significance of digitalization during the pandemic when social protection programs cannot be delivered because there was no single registry or database of Filipinos to identify beneficiaries.
NEDA has urged the government to speed up the implementation of the digital contact tracing system that could help reduce the period from detection of Covid-19 virus to isolation from 7 to 5 days.
