President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. wants both public and private sectors to collaborate to propel the digitization agenda in the Philippines forward.

During the question-and-answer portion of the “World Economic Forum” in Malacañan earlier this week, Marcos Jr. wanted to fortify critical infrastructures against cyber-attacks while improving the country’s internet connectivity.

“Well, we are still at the level where we are worried about connectivity and we are working very hard because being an island nation that becomes a real factor, that becomes a real challenge,” Marcos Jr. said.

“We conducted a survey and on how–what are the consumers’ habits when it comes to the use of the internet and we got back statistics which was rather worrisome and that was that 95 percent of an ordinary Filipino citizen’s activities in terms of payment, for example, clearances and all that, 95 percent of the activity is over the internet. The last five percent was the government and that’s why we still are falling behind," he added.

The President mentioned that with the assistance of various organizations, the government is making strides in narrowing the gap, establishing fiber optic networks, and setting up data centers.

Marcos Jr. also conveyed hopefulness regarding initiatives aimed at creating a cloud platform tailored for the Philippines, with a focus on enhancing cybersecurity measures.

He characterized the cybersecurity issue as a downside of technological advancement, emphasizing its severity and the government's proactive response to address it.

“We have many instances where there are scams, there is hacking. We, in terms of actual security, also have been–have fallen victim to many of these nefarious activities," Marcos said.

Google Philippines, for its part, praised the strong and impressive expansion of the Philippine economy during the current Marcos administration, noting that the government's data align with the findings of Google's digital economy reports.

Google Philippines Country Manager Jackie Wang, who was present during the event, said Marcos' observations regarding the growth potential in the Philippines are echoed in Google's digital economy report.

“Our reports reflect a lot of what you mentioned about the growth potential and the amazing growth that we’ve seen in the Philippines,” she told Marcos.

Wang said that starting from 2023, the digital economy of the Philippines has reached a value of $23 billion in growth in merchandising value, experiencing a compound growth rate of 16 percent.