New DoST business program to feature beneficiaries, livelihood opportunities 

The Department of Science and Technology (DoST) launched NegoSiyensiya on Tuesday to highlight its successful beneficiaries across different industries and encourage more Filipinos to explore business opportunities.

“Based on our survey, our audiences are interested in livelihood,” DoST Supervising Science Research Specialist Ma. Lotuslei P. Dimagiba told BusinessWorld in an interview on Tuesday.

“It will discuss how to handle money and how DoST’s services and programs can help our entrepreneurs,” she added.

Ms. Dimagiba noted that financial constraints remain the biggest barrier for Filipinos starting their own business.

Micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) represent the 99.6% of all businesses in the country. However, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed that total MSME loans accounted for only 4.59% of the country’s banking industry’s lending portfolio, significantly below the prescribed 10% ratio.

To address the financial bottleneck, the program explores business ventures enabled by DoST’s financial assistance.

“Aside from R&D (research and design), we have a lot of programs that we really want people to avail themselves of because not everyone knows about it,” Ms. Dimagiba said.

“We want to show that our beneficiaries started from small capital and later flourished, that’s what we want to imply to our audiences,” she added.

Among the funding programs that will be showcased on the show is the Small Enterprise Technology Upgrading Program (SETUP).

SETUP is a nationwide strategy launched by DoST to assist MSMEs in adopting technological innovations and meeting requirements.

“Most people save up for their business capital, but if you don’t have the means, you’ll borrow from the bank, which has interest,” she said.

“If you avail the programs that DoST has when it comes to financial assistance, it’s 0% interest,” she added. “There is financial assistance, and we just need to get it out so that people can avail themselves of it.”

Apart from business opportunities, NegoSiyensiya also aims to make discussions about science and technology more accessible to the public.

“What we lack is more promotions and dissemination of information on success stories because it’s hard to avoid the mindset that science is hard,” she said.

“We want to share and produce S&T (science and technology) content that is not far-fetched or hard to understand,” she added. “The stories that we will feature have science, but at the same time, they have a human factor.”

In line with the initiative to make science conversations more accessible and unassuming, DoST unveiled its vodcast platform, Sci.Say, which will explore emerging trends in science, technology, and innovation.

NegoSiyensiya will air on GTV and DZBB every Saturday beginning June 13, while Sci.Say will release its first online episode on June 11. — Almira Louise S. Martinez