CHANGES and improvements in the country’s Monthly Integrated Survey of Selected Industries (MISSI) will be implemented by 2008, the National Statistics Office (NSO) said.

The NSO is currently conducting consultations with the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) to improve the data collection and qualifications for survey participants as well as survey questions.

NSO Industry and Trade Statistics Department director Estela de Guzman said NSO will be adding more sample establishments and questions to the survey to increase its reliability and make the survey in tune with the National Income Accounts.

De Guzman added that along with these changes, the NSO will be rebasing the MISSI to the 2000 basket. The current MISSI is based on the 1994 basket.

“We are already in the process of improving the MISSI. The weights that we will be using will also be based on year 2000,” she said.

The changes in the MISSI will also include the new small industry players in 2007 as well as the big manufacturing firms.

Last October, the NSCB and the NSO submitted proposals to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to further improve the MISSI as an indicator of the performance of the manufacturing sector and as a data source for the national accounts.

The NSCB Technical Notes on the PSNA Series 2002 second quarter and third quarter have also provided some explanatory notes on how the MISSI data are used in the National Accounts estimation.

Earlier, users of the MISSI have complained of the survey’s inconsistencies compared with other government data sets, saying such effectively confuse rather than give a clearer picture of plant-level activity.

NSO, together with the National Statistical Coordination Board which generates the national income accounts, has been working with monetary authorities to improve the reliability of the MISSI data set, which are: the Value of Production Index (VaPI), the Volume of Production Index (VoPI), the Producer’s Price Index (PPI) as well as Capacity Utilization.

TRADE Secretary Peter B. Favila suspects that the cement giants in the country are probably bloating their financing charges to justify their relatively high prices.

AT least 30 percent of the workers of food and handicraft exporters have been retrenched due to the continued appreciation of the peso against the dollar, Philippine Exporters Confederation (Philexport) president Sergio Ortiz-Luis said.

THE Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) has picked the amendments to the antismuggling law to become its second priority legislation for lobbying in Congress.

PTT Philippines Corp. (PTTPC), the local subsidiary of Thailand’s largest petroleum company, said Monday that it has opened its first fuel depot on Mactan Island, Cebu.

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—In about five years, most of the Subic Bay Freeport will be abloom, and fruits will be dangling from some 7,000 trees that would line up the main roads from the Subic gateway to Cubi Point and up to the Naval Magazine area.

CHANGES and improvements in the country’s Monthly Integrated Survey of Selected Industries (MISSI) will be implemented by 2008, the National Statistics Office (NSO) said.

SPEAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. will propose to the International Monetary Fund the creation of an IMF counterpart in Asia, saying that the recent successes of Asian bonds and swap arrangements among Asian central banks are movements toward a monetary vehicle in the region.

THE National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) has improved monitoring of projects funded by official development assistance (ODA) and now requires all implementing agencies to submit more detailed information on projects with cost overruns.