Officials rally behind local startups to drive Caraga growth
By Saghir Hussain ·
Philippine officials are betting on homegrown startups to lift one of the country’s poorest regions — while Whitehall still treats regional tech policy as a press release.
The Butuan blueprint
Local and national leaders in Butuan City have formalised a pact linking government agencies, universities and private capital to turn the Caraga region into a startup hub. The agreement, signed this week, commits the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Trade and Industry, and Caraga State University to shared infrastructure, mentorship pipelines and seed funding access. “We are not importing solutions,” said Butuan mayor Ronnie Vicente Lagnada. “We are building from what we have — agriculture, minerals, young talent.”
Caraga posted 6.2% GDP growth in 2023, above the national average, yet poverty incidence remains at 28.7%. The strategy targets agritech, mining tech and logistics — sectors where local problems are immediate and markets are real.
The UK parallel no one in Westminster mentions
Britain’s own “levelling up” rhetoric has produced catapult centres, innovation districts and a British Business Bank portfolio heavy on later-stage deals. But ask a founder in Middlesbrough, Swansea or Derry how many angel networks operate within an hour’s drive, and the silence is telling. The UK’s regional venture gap widened in 2025: London still attracted 68% of all VC capital, while the North East, Yorkshire and Northern Ireland combined took less than 4%.
Philippine officials are doing something UK ministers rarely attempt — aligning procurement, planning permission and university IP rules behind a single regional goal. Butuan’s city hall has fast-tracked business permits for startups solving local supply-chain bottlenecks. In the UK, a Manchester-based agritech founder still waits 14 weeks for a council decision on a test-bed site.
Small businesses, not pitch decks
The Caraga plan measures success in jobs created and farmer incomes raised — not unicorn valuations. A pilot linking coconut farmers to a Butuan-built traceability app cut middlemen margins by 18% in six months. That is the metric that matters: whether the tech puts money in the pocket of the person growing the crop.
UK policy remains fixated on “high-growth” firms that scale fast and exit faster. The British Business Bank’s own 2024 review admitted that 72% of its equity investments went to companies already turning over £5m+. Meanwhile, a Sheffield metal-components firm adopting AI for predictive maintenance cannot get a £50k loan without personal guarantees on the founder’s house.
Caraga’s experiment may fail. Corruption, talent drain and patchy broadband are real. But it starts from the right question: what does this region actually produce, and who gets left out? UK industrial strategy still starts from the wrong one: how do we create the next DeepMind?
If Butuan can align a mayor, a university and a farmer around one platform, why can’t Rotherham?