From creative strength to sustainable growth, translating ASEAN’s creativity into lasting economic value through intellectual property, stronger enterprises, investment, and regional cooperation.
Short link:https://wp.me/paaccn-112
TAGUIG CITY, Philippines, September 18, 2026 – ASEAN is rich in resources. But one of its most abundant may also be among its least fully tapped: its strong creative base.
Across Southeast Asia, creativity is already shaping films and games, fashion and design, music and performance, digital content and new forms of cultural expression. It is also increasingly creating businesses, intellectual property, jobs, and new markets.
The question is how much further that value can go — and what it will take to capture, commercialize, and scale more of it across the region.
That is the conversation at the heart of the ASEAN Creative Economy agenda under the Philippines’ 2026 ASEAN Chairmanship, with ASEAN-Business Advisory Council (BAC) Philippines bringing a private-sector lens to what comes next.
Through its Creative Economy Working Group, ASEAN-BAC Philippines is supporting this push through three interconnected initiatives: a regional study with knowledge partner Isla Lipana & Co./PwC Philippines; the ASEAN Creative Economy Business Dialogue 2026, which brings together business, government, investors, and creative-industry stakeholders; and the development of an ASEAN Creative Economy Policy Paper that will translate research and stakeholder insights into practical recommendations for regional consideration.
The central proposition is simple:
ASEAN does not lack creativity. The opportunity lies in capturing and scaling the value that creativity can create.
The opportunity is already in the numbers
Globally, creative services exports reached US$1.7 trillion in 2024, while creative goods exports were valued at about US$709 billion. Source: UN Trade and Development [UNCTAD]
In the Philippines, the Creative Economy generated ₱2.12 trillion in 2025, equivalent to 7.6 percent of GDP, supported 8.71 million jobs, and generated approximately ₱747 billion in creative goods and services exports. Source: Philippine Statistics Authority [PSA]
Based on publicly available data compiled by Isla Lipana & Co./PwC Philippines, creative industries in selected ASEAN economies generated around US$300 billion in aggregate value in 2025 and approximately US$150 billion in creative goods and services exports in 2024.
Taken together, these figures show creativity is already a significant economic force, while highlighting the opportunity to capture more of its benefits for creators, enterprises, and the region.
From creating value to scaling it
The PwC research provides an initial evidence base on selected creative sectors across ASEAN, identifying common themes, structural challenges, and emerging opportunities. It also sets the stage for deeper exploration at the country, sector, value-chain, and market levels.
Rather than offering an exhaustive view of ASEAN’s creative industries, it provides a strategic foundation for further study, policy development, and business engagement. It points to a pathway for turning the region’s creative strengths into sustainable economic value by improving how creative products and services are financed, protected, commercialized, distributed, and scaled.
Significant creative assets exist alongside constraints such as fragmented data, uneven ecosystem maturity, gaps in financing and IP commercialization, digital and AI readiness, and market access. These challenges also point to ways to strengthen the enabling environment for creative enterprises through deeper collaboration and greater regional connectivity.
The ASEAN-BAC framework approaches this growth potential through three interconnected stages:
CREATE VALUE — Turn talent, culture and imagination into products, experiences and intellectual property.
CAPTURE VALUE — Strengthen ownership, commercialization, financing, licensing, and distribution so creators and businesses retain more of the value they generate.
SCALE VALUE — Help creative enterprises reach larger markets through investment, technology, exports and cross-border partnerships.
The opportunity, then, is not simply for ASEAN to create more. It is to own more, commercialize better, and build stronger enterprises around what it creates.
“The creative economy starts with people, with their stories, imagination, skills and cultural heritage. Across ASEAN, people are already creating value that entertains us, connects us and shapes how the world sees our region. Our research brings evidence to that opportunity — where value is already being created, where more can be captured, and where focused attention and action can make a difference. The opportunity is for more of that creativity to become sustainable livelihoods and stronger enterprises, and for creators to share more fully in the value they create. When that happens, creativity becomes more than cultural expression. It becomes a powerful and renewable source of economic opportunity,” said Mary Jade Roxas-Divinagracia, Isla Lipana & Co./PwC Philippines Deals and Corporate Finance Managing Partner.
From insight to regional action,
ASEAN Member States start from different strengths, levels of maturity, and areas of specialization. The next stage of growth is not about making creative industries identical, but about connecting complementary capabilities across the region.
Greater connectivity can allow talent, production, technology, financing, distribution, and access to audiences to work across borders, helping creative enterprises reach larger markets.
Five strategic creative sectors—film, animation, game development, fashion, and performing arts — serve as lenses for understanding ASEAN’s opportunities and structural challenges.
“ASEAN is sitting on an extraordinary resource: the imagination of its people. Creativity does not diminish when we use it; it can continuously generate new intellectual property, enterprises, and markets. From the private-sector perspective, our opportunity is to build the systems that allow ASEAN to own more of that value, connect its different strengths, and scale them together,” said Junie del Mundo, Senior Adviser for Creative Economy of ASEAN-BAC Philippines and Chair of the Creative Economy Working Group.
Policy as a pathway to opportunity
ASEAN already has a regional foundation through the Siem Reap Declaration, the ASEAN Creative Economy Sustainability Framework, and ASEAN 2045. A key priority for the Philippines’ 2026 Chairmanship is to move the agenda from framework to implementation by identifying practical areas where business, government, and regional institutions can work together.
“The Philippines’ Chairmanship gives us the platform to move the Creative Economy conversation from frameworks toward implementation. The research, the Dialogue and the Policy Paper are intended to build an evidence base that can support continued regional engagement beyond 2026,” del Mundo added.
Insights from the research, stakeholder consultations, and the Business Dialogue will feed into the ASEAN Creative Economy Policy Paper being developed by the ASEAN-BAC Philippines Creative Economy Working Group. The Policy Paper will bring these inputs together into recommendations for regional consideration.
Through these efforts, ASEAN-BAC Philippines is championing stronger regional collaboration to help transform Southeast Asia’s creative strengths into a larger source of economic growth, jobs, exports, and investment.
Alongside the regional agenda, the Philippines offers its own illustration of how creative potential can be developed into economic value. Its creative advantage lies in the people behind its ideas, stories, culture, and lived experiences, and in the ability to translate these into intellectual property, enterprises, and opportunities that can reach beyond its shores.
“The Philippines’ creative advantage lies in our people and our ability to turn culture, stories, and lived experience into ideas that resonate beyond our shores. PCIDA provides a pathway to translate that talent into intellectual property, stronger enterprises, and wider market opportunities. But creating value is only part of the equation. That value must also be communicated well, because how we tell the story of our creativity shapes how audiences, investors, and markets understand, value, and trust it. Even a world-class idea can fall short of its potential if people do not understand what makes it distinctive or why it matters,” said Malyn Molina, Executive Adviser to the Creative Economy Working Group of ASEAN-BAC Philippines and President of EON Group.
“Our ambition should be for the Philippines not only to produce world-class creative talent, but to create, own, communicate, and scale Filipino creative value for the world,” Molina added.
Carrying the momentum forward
The ASEAN Creative Economy Business Dialogue 2026, a featured forum of ASEAN Creative Industries Expo by Malikhaing Pinoy 2026 organized with the Department of Trade and Industry–Philippine Creative Industries Development Council (DTI-PCIDC), will bring together the business, policy, and creative communities to draw on the study’s findings and explore areas for regional collaboration. Together, the Dialogue and the wider work of the Creative Economy Working Group create a pathway for turning evidence and stakeholder insights into continued regional engagement beyond the Philippines’ 2026 ASEAN Chairmanship.
The future of ASEAN’s Creative Economy will not be written by one country, one industry or one Chairmanship alone. It will take shape in the conversations where ideas meet, perspectives shift, and possibilities begin to forge a path forward. What starts here can become policy, partnerships, and progress that continue to take shape in the years ahead. (/)
_________
About the ASEAN-BAC Philippines Creative Economy Working Group
The ASEAN-BAC Philippines Creative Economy Working Group brings a private-sector perspective to ASEAN’s evolving Creative Economy agenda. Its work spans research and evidence-building, industry consultation, policy development, business engagement, and regional convening, focusing on practical areas where stronger ASEAN cooperation can help creative enterprises create, capture, and scale more economic value.