CHED is putting 120 million pesos behind student startups in farming and fishing
Twenty four state universities get 5 million pesos each over two years. The target is more than 200 new companies, built by students who would otherwise have shelved the idea after graduation.
The Commission on Higher Education has committed 120 million pesos to help college students turn farming and fishing research into actual businesses. The program is called SIBOL, short for Student Technology Business Incubation Program for the Agri-Aqua Sector. CHED handed out the first awards on July 30 at its auditorium in Quezon City.
The money is split evenly. Twenty four state universities and colleges each get 5 million pesos, spread across two years, which works out to 60 million pesos a year nationwide. Each school is expected to back at least 10 student innovators, so the program is aiming for more than 200 registered enterprises by the time the two years are done.
This is not a new pot of money handed to whoever applies. CHED opened the call for proposals in April 2026, and only state schools already running an agri-aqua technology business incubator backed by the Department of Science and Technology were eligible. The incubators existed. What was missing, CHED Chairperson Shirley Agrupis said at the awarding, was cash to move student projects past the presentation stage.
Every year, our students and faculty produce promising research and technologies. However, many remain as theses, capstone projects, or course requirements because they lack opportunities for further development into products, services, or startup ventures that can benefit our communities and industries.
Why it matters
Agrupis is describing something most Filipino graduates recognize. A thesis gets defended, gets a grade, and then sits in a library. The gap was never the idea, it was the money and the months of guidance needed to test whether anyone would pay for it. SIBOL tries to buy exactly that gap, in the sector where the country has the most raw material to work with. It also puts the money outside Metro Manila by design. Because eligibility ran through existing DOST-backed incubators at state universities, the 24 slots sit on regional campuses rather than in the capital. A student in a provincial agriculture school now has a funded path that did not exist last year, and the incubator running it is on their own campus.
The catch to watch
Five million pesos over two years, split among at least 10 student teams per school, is roughly 500,000 pesos each before the incubator takes its share for staff and operations. That is enough to build and test something. It is not enough to survive the years after graduation, when the founders need salaries and the grant is gone. The program counts success as a registered business by the end of two years, and registering a company is the easy part. The number worth asking for in 2028 is not how many were registered, but how many were still selling.