Pitchaya Sirivunnabood, PhD
Capacity Building and Training Economist, Asian Development Bank Institute

Herlyn Gail A. Alegre
Capacity Building and Training Associate, Asian Development Bank Institute

The creative economy has the potential to not only strengthen the expansion of global value chains, increase digital adoption among creative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), fuel the export of cultural goods and creative services, and foster ownership through local engagement, but also contribute to the overarching goal of sustainable development. The global market for creative goods increased considerably from 436 billion US dollars in 2002 to 964 billion US dollars in 2015 (UNCTAD, 2021).

Southeast Asian countries are among those that have extended support to their creative industries to boost the creative economy, realising that knowledge-based economic activities can foster income generation, job creation and export earnings while promoting social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development (UNCTAD, 2010). 

Following the global trend, creative trade in Southeast Asia has also risen in the past decade. Countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand have been increasingly promoting trade in creative goods and services. Singapore, for example, is currently the world’s 10th largest exporter of creative goods, generating 743 billion US dollars in profits (UNCTAD, 2018) and creating 12.7 million jobs (UNSECO, 2015). Meanwhile, Indonesia reached a growth rate of almost 30 per cent for its exports of creative goods during 2012–2015.  Indonesia also contributed to changing the landscape for the creative economy in Southeast Asia as a strong advocate and the main sponsor of the proposal to declare 2021 as the UN International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development. To strengthen creative industries, Thailand re-established the Creative Economy Agency (CEA) in 2018 to foster collaboration and lead the direction of the creative industries. In the Philippines, the Philippine Creative Industries Development Act filed at the House of Representatives proposes the establishment of a Creative Industries Council to drive the development plan for recovery and growth of the creative industries in the country. 

While the creative economy has offered a large potential for socioeconomic growth, the COVID-19 pandemic has hindered the industry’s progress and resulted in loss of livelihoods and income. Comprehensive policy responses for the creative economy need to be in place to assist its recovery and assure its resilience and sustainability, both in normal and unprecedented circumstances.

Overview of the Creative Economy in Southeast Asia 

The value of creative trade in ASEAN, for both exports and imports, has been increasing since 2003. However, the growth of creative trade declined during 2012–2015. A decrease in exports was evident in Malaysia and Thailand, while a decline in imports was evident in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. 

According to UNCTAD’s statistical breakdowns, the export of creative goods in Southeast Asia has depended mainly on the design sector. Singapore has contributed the largest proportion, which has caused an unbalanced development of the region’s creative industries (Sioson and Korwatanasakul, 2021). To understand Southeast Asia’s creative economy landscape in more detail, we describe the best practices of selected ASEAN countries (namely Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines) to extract policy recommendations in addressing the challenges in the region.

Entrepreneurs in Indonesia have been progressively engaged in creative economy initiatives for sustainable development in recent years by adopting digital platforms and other digital tools to connect their culture with broader audiences. For example, videos of the famous Indonesian singer and YouTuber Rainych Ran, became viral in Japan and elsewhere, showing that the “directional flow of the cultural goods has diversified from source to consumer countries all around the ASEAN region” (Nakajima, 2021). The younger generation can harness the new digital landscape, such as Internet media technologies and social media and networking sites, to facilitate the delivery of their creative products. Such multidirectional flows can help promote the soft power of a country and heighten cultural diversity (Nakajima, 2021).

Singapore, as a leader in advancing the creative economy in the region, has developed a robust climate for creative businesses and entrepreneurship. To foster an environment where creative industries can flourish, Singapore has focused its efforts on creating “a cohesive and welcoming multi-cultural society; strong intellectual property laws to protect ideas” (Wee, 2021). Strong collaboration among networks of creative agencies has created multiple events, such as the Design Week, Writers’ Festival, and International Festival of Arts. Singapore also nurtures creative talents by opening opportunities to expose students of all levels to arts, design, digital, and media in cooperation with the Ministry of Education (Wee, 2021). 

To drive the growth of the creative economy in Thailand, the CEA has established the Thailand Creative District Network to connect the public and private sectors with civil society to promote creative environments for the industry. The CEA also facilitates the application of UNESCO Creative Cities for Bangkok and Sukhothai, has organised Bangkok’s Design Week since 2018, and established the CEA Online Academy, which offers online creative courses for capacity building and the CEA Vaccine for SME consultation (CEA, 2021).

The Philippines’ creative economy has continued to grow. The creative industries, mostly from the copyright-based formal sector, comprise 6.52 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2012. The creative economy generated 3.2 billion US dollars in 2018, mainly from creative services such as software and IT services, animation, game development, digital marketing, and design services, making the country number one in the ASEAN region. Despite this success, there is no creative economy center or government agency in the Philippines in charge of the sector to date. A huge segment of the industry relies on freelancers, who are estimated to number around 2–4 times as many as those in the formal sector but are unaccounted for in official statistics, making it more difficult to assist them during the COVID-19 pandemic (Mercado, 2021).