PHL road to digitalization to be costly, ADB says

PHILIPPINE EFFORTS to digitalize its economy will be expensive, but it must keep pace with its neighbors to further its inclusion and sustainability agenda, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said.

- Luisa Maria Jacinta C. Jocson

“For the Philippines, due to geographical features, deploying stable and universal connections, especially in hard-to-connect remote areas, could be expensive,” ADB Principal Economist Shu Tian said in an e-mail.

“In some places this might be commercially less attractive to the private sector. This calls for initiatives to promote quality and coverage of connectivity.”

In the ADB's Asian Development Policy Report on digital transformation, the Philippines was classified as a low-digitalization country alongside Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

High-digitalization, high-inclusion countries pursuing sustainable policies were South Korea and Singapore, while high-digitalization but low-inclusion and sustainability countries included Indonesia, India, Thailand, and Vietnam.

“When factoring in income levels and rising data requirements, mobile data costs in the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka were unaffordable for the three to four poorest income deciles,” according to the report.

“Moreover, digital literacy remains low across the region, even in upper middle-income economies,” it added.