The National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) disclosed that the Philippine Statistical System (PSS) may already be outdated, particularly in the design of its surveys and the parameters the government uses in coming up with official data.
Neda Director General and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said this is the reason the PSS is currently undergoing a review, which will be completed in two years.
“The parameters we’re using in calculating statistics of interest might be already too outdated. And so the World Bank is helping us, especially in the provision of technical expertise, to improve the statistical system. We hope to complete that within the next two years,” Balisacan said.
Balisacan explained that the designs of some of the surveys used to complete data, such as the National Income Accounts (NIA), which includes gross domestic product (GDP) data, or the Labor Force Survey, which focuses on employment data, may already be outdated.
He said the design of the survey was not updated to include recent events, such as the rise of the business-process outsourcing industry, or the decline in the share of the agriculture sector in GDP.
“We want to address the issues raised about data and one of this is the issue in the computation of the NIA,” Balisacan added.
Balisacan said the review of the PSS is only the second phase of the improvement of the statistical system. The first part of this process was the reorganization of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The PSA is the country’s main statistical agency. It combined the National Statistics Office, National Statistical Coordination Board, Bureau of Agriculture Statistics and the Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics into one agency.
“The first part of it was the reorganization that’s done by combining all the statistical agencies, so we can avoid these conflict-of-interest issues in the generation of statistics. The second phase of this exercise is to review the changes in the methodologies in the national income accounts,” Balisacan said.
The PSA’s current head is national statistician Lisa Grace Bersales. She was appointed by President Aquino in April 2014 as the country’s first PSA national statistician.
The PSA was created through Republic Act 10625, known as the Philippine Statistical Act of 2013, which became effective in December 2013.