THE Philippines should not lose its bid to host an Asean Center of Excellence for the creative economy, with the country facing competing proposals from neighboring countries, an Asean Business Advisory Council (Asean-BAC) official said.
Asean BAC Senior Adviser for Creative Economy Teodoro ‘Junie’ del Mundo said the proposed center would put the country at the forefront of the region’s creative-economy initiatives.
‘We shouldn’t lose this. That’s why I said, if we lose this…we will be pitiful,’ Del Mundo told reporters on Thursday in Taguig.
The proposal has already secured the support of Asean economic ministers, he said, and is awaiting approval by the bloc’s heads of state, who are expected to finalize the matter in November.
The country is also pushing for two other Asean centers, one focused on micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and another on women, but Del Mundo said the creative economy center could have the largest economic impact among the three proposals.
The proposed center would be jointly governed by the public and private sectors, with representatives from both economic and sociocultural bodies of member states.
Now, the proposal is moving toward its financing and preparatory stages, with a landscape study identified as one of the major pieces of work that still needs to be completed.
Del Mundo said the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is seeking funding for the study, which will map the region’s creative economy and help establish the foundation for the center.
‘If everything goes according to plan, hopefully by 2028, it will be up and running. Because there’s a lot of groundwork being done for this,’ he said.
The bid is being advanced under the Philippines’s chairship of Asean, with the creative economy identified from the outset as one of the country’s priority economic deliverables.
For Del Mundo, this gives the Philippine proposal additional significance as the country seeks to secure approval before its chairship ends.
‘This is the very first time that the creative economy is in the agenda. And it is in the priority economic deliverables of the Philippines as chair,’ he said.
The Philippines is not the only Asean member seeking a role in the regional creative economy. Del Mundo acknowledged that Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia are also being discussed as potential competitors for the initiative.