When the Joint Foreign Chambers (JFC) launched Arangkada in 2010 and focused—among others—on “7 Big Winners,” Creative Industries was seen as one of the sectors that has great potential:
“Filipinos enjoy a well-deserved international reputation for creativity. Filipino musicians and singers have long been global troubadours and, in recent years, are entertaining luxury cruise passengers and appearing on stage in West End and Broadway musicals. Filipino designers and crafts persons have helped the country to be known as the ‘Milan of Asia’ in designer circles.”
The Arangkada Team—John Forbes and Froi Tajale—invited Cesar Tolentino and me a few weeks ago for a breakfast meeting on Creative Industries, to assess the present situation of this “winning” sector seven years later and to decide next steps. The breakfast lasted more than two hours and we came to the conclusion that it would make good sense to arrange a Creative Industries Roundtable in February with industry players and other stakeholders to creatively drive this sector with enormous potential forward.
Cesar Tolentino outlined the potential the other day:
“It is estimated that the global digital content industry could be worth as much as $1.96 trillion back in 2011 [according to a 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers study], with a compound annual growth rate of about 6.4 percent. When projected, this could reach $2.78 trillion by 2017. In comparison, the global BPO [business-process outsourcing] industry in 2017 is estimated to be about $250 billion according to the IT-Business Process Association of the Philippines. So, in theory, the Philippines could grab as much as 10 percent of this market or about $278 billion.
The US Trade Department limits ‘digital content’ to video games, video on demand, e-publishing and digital music. They estimate the 2016 size of the industry to be at $89.5 billion.
These are the large companies that are part of this industry:Tencent, Microsoft, Sony, Activision Blizzard, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, EA, Netease, Nexon, Mixi, Warner Bros., Square Enix, DeNA, Zynga, NCSoft, Baidu, Deezer, Dish Network, Giant Interactive Group, Hulu, Nintendo, Reed Elsevier, Schibsted, Spotify, Wolters Kluwer, Konami, Ubisoft, Bandai Namco, etc.”
It is important to note that the Philippine Creative Industries can be/should be a driver of employment: The Unesco Creative Economy Report in 2010 cited that the Philippine Creative Industries contributed to more than 11 percent of total employment in 2009, or roughly equivalent to a 4 million work force in Creative Industries. The Philippine Creative Industries are demonstrating an ability to drive up employment in the country.
As agreed at the breakfast meeting, we will try to project the future at the roundtable and find try to find out whether our former extrapolation was correct: ‘Using trends that were noted for the period of 2008 to 2010, the Philippine Creative Industries could have reached $11 billion in revenues by the end of 2016. At the same time, employment in the sector could have reached nearly 5.7 million.’
With these projections—if true —the sector will be the next sunrise industry in terms of performance.
Our problem, however, is that this important sector is not fully known in the government and in the private sector. Luckily, the BusinessMirror is willing to help the sector and make the sector better understood and to spread the excitement; starting today, the Creative Sector will be featured in a weekly column.
Comments are welcome; you can contact me under Schumacher@mcasia.org.