Albay Rep. Joey Salceda has filed House Bill No. 10613 or the “Build, Build, Build for Creative Industries,” measure saying that the “future of Philippine exports is service-based industries, including culture.”
As early as February 2020, he proposed the creation of the House panel on creative industries in an aide memoire to the House leadership, citing the Philippines must make investments in its cultural industries “similar to what Korea did in the wake of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, as a way to diversify their then-manufacturing dependent economy.”
“Culture is resilient. It’s crisis-proof. When one aspect of it, such as tourism, suffers, other alternatives such as art and digital content can emerge. That’s why the creative industries are an excellent hedge against economic crises,” he stressed.
He cited the success stories in Europe and South Korea in promoting the creatives sector.
“In the European Union, the creatives sector account for 4.4 percent of GDP. In South Korea, the creatives sector contributes around 2% of the economy, and also boosts Korean tourism, with around 55.3 percent of all inbound tourism being related to its creative sector – best exemplified by the Hallyu wave or K-culture. It is useful to note that these countries are also highly-industrialized, where manufacturing and high-value services are dominant,” he said.
“In fact, K-Pop was one of the most resilient sectors of the Korean economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. One group alone, BTS, contributed $4.9 billion to the Korean economy during the pandemic.
For perspective, this is half the entire pre-pandemic tourist economy of the Philippines,” he added.
He, however, noted that “In the Philippines, the lack of a framework for supporting creatives has resulted in a sector that can sometimes be a large contributor to the economy, but whose revenues can suddenly collapse during a crisis.”
“Although it is estimated that the creatives contribute, directly or indirectly, anywhere between 4 and 7 percent of GDP, the Creative Economy Council of the Philippines estimates that the sector lost 90 percent of its revenues during the COVID-19 pandemic. This, if ever, would make the sector among the hardest-hit sectors of the economy,” he said.
He said in the Korean model, “resilience appears to be due to strong public investment.”
According to Salceda, an entire ecosystem of public support has been built to bolster K-culture.
A division of the Korean Ministry of Culture, the Popular Culture Industry Division, focuses on Korean pop music, fashion, mass entertainment, comic books, cartoons, and other key products.
“Its budget is a colossal $5.5 billion, with the aim to boost economic growth particularly through growing the country’s cultural industry export industry,” he noted.
Under Salceda’s proposal, a National Creative Industries Investment Program, or the Build, Build, Build for the Creative Industries, would be created as the roadmap for public support in the sector.
“One model for excellent cultural infrastructure restoration is the Metropolitan Theater or the MET which is now back to its old glory. Once people are more comfortable with crowds, I expect that to be the country’s leading venue for avant-garde art and culture. It will be a success story,” he said.
