What are science and technology policies that could be adapted or implemented in the Philippines?
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Answer:
Expansions in science and technology have marked the onset of the Third Millennium. If harnessed rationally and effectively, these could help eradicate hunger, poverty, destitution and indignity. The progress in the fields of biotechnology, information and communication technology, medicine, space science and management science offers unprecedented opportunity for multifaceted development. The industrialized countries and a few developing countries (in some of the areas) are vigorously capturing these uncommon opportunities by innovating, adapting and regulating these technologies. But the majority of the developing countries are far behind and are further falling behind, thus widening the technology divide. Based on indicators of technology creation, diffusion of recent innovations, diffusion of old innovations and human skills, UNDP had the calculated technology achievement index (TAI) of 72 countries. Although somewhat flawed as it generally ignores the vast contributions of public sectors, which are mostly not under IPR, the index shows that Finland with a TAI of 0.744 was first, closely followed by the USA with a TAI of 0.733. Japan was fourth. Table 30 gives TAI of countries of the Asia-Pacific region (for which data were available). It may be seen from the table that of the 15 countries (including Hong Kong and Singapore), five were listed as "Leaders", two as "Potential Leaders", six as "Dynamic Adopters" and two as "Marginalized". A good number of the countries are in the "Marginalized" category. In order to bridge the technology gap, effective policies and programmes are needed in the countries with lower TAI.