Pretty soon provinces would be able to track their respective domestic products to give them a better idea of how they are performing and how to benchmark their performance targets moving forward.
In fact, two government agencies are now developing two separate methodologies to do this.
Administrative structure, information availability and CBMS
During the April 26 presentation of the Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) of Northern Mindanao (Region 10) by the Philippine Statistics Authority Region 10 (PSA-10) Regional Director Ronaldo C. Taghap said their agency is currently developing the Provincial Product Account (PPA) for this purpose.
“The methodology is still under development and at present we cannot yet present provincial PPA date but hopefully the PPA would already be available in some future year,” Taghap said.
In fact, Taghap said the PPA is already being piloted in Palawan and Batanes but admits the difficulty of getting data from local government units (LGUs) is presenting a stiff challenge.
Meantime, PSA is extending technical assistance to LGUs to help them source relevant proxy data for their own use such as building permits, employment figures, and electricity consumption that can help LGUs develop their provincial and municipal development plans.
On a parallel track, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) is looking at the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) of the LGUs to see how it can be inputted to the PSA methodology for computing GRDP.
The Community-Based Monitoring System-Computerized Data Processing System (CBMS-CDPS) is used to process household-level information gathered through the CBMS survey.
NEDA-10 Director Leon M. Dacanay, Jr., said CBMS has been submitted to PSA but has not yet been accepted nationwide. LGUs use various methodologies to monitor growth, CBMS could be a methodology adopted by all. In the future we can improve on that and improve the quality validation of the estimates.
“Methodologies for estimating provincial accounts are now being piloted in island provinces since these are easier to estimate,” Dacanay said. “Once proven, these can be replicated elsewhere. At present, the current practice is to look at provincial accounts of model provinces like Palawan and Guimaras because it’s easier to estimate these if you look at them as a closed economy.”
The Community-Based Monitoring System is one of the tools developed in the early 1990s under the Micro Impacts of Macroeconomic Adjustment Policies (MIMAP) Project -Philippines to provide policymakers and program implementers with a good information base for tracking the impacts of macroeconomic reforms and various policy shocks.
The CBMS work in the Philippines evolved after it was observed that there was no disaggregated data then for planning, program formulation, policy impact and poverty monitoring.
There was also a need for support mechanisms for the implementation of the decentralization policy. The CBMS is envisioned to serve as a tool for local governance and complement the national poverty monitoring system.
The CBMS can likewise facilitate the implementation of targeted poverty reduction programs with its household and individual level data as well as the monitoring and evaluation of these poverty reduction programs.
CBMS has been adopted by local government units in the Philippines since 2000. Various policy issuances by LGUs and national government agencies including the Department of the Interior and Local Government , the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC), and the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) have recognized the usefulness of CBMS for generating the necessary disaggregated data for various thematic concerns including local planning, grassroots participatory budgeting, poverty diagnosis, monitoring the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), disaster-risk reduction management (DRRM) and climate change adaptation (CCA), gender and development, impact monitoring, and food insecurity among others.
CBMS Flow of Information
Technical support to LGUs on the implementation and use of the standard CBMS modules on data collection (CBMS paper-track and CBMS Accelerated Poverty Profiling using tablets), data processing and use of CBMS data in preparing local development profiles and plans is being provided by a pool of accredited CBMS trainers from the DILG and the CBMS International Network Office of DLSU.
In Region X, NEDA and RDC X currently use the Quarterly Regional Economic Situationer (QRES) as proxy accounts for provinces.
“We use this to estimate the outcomes of the GRDP which is why we have a fairly good idea if and when a particular GRDP account approximates our QRES figures or not,” Dacanay noted. “We do this on a quarterly basis using certain proxy indicators which are provided to us by the different agencies.”
Asked about the feasibility of presenting PSA GRDP results with NEDA QRES Annual Results for an approximation of provincial performance by sector, Dacanay said he would suggest the same to PSA for the next GRDP presentation for 2018.
“QRES can validate data nila kasi with QRES you can predict the year end performance because of the quarterly breakdown. If you look at the regional estimates, you can see which province and what sectors contributed more,” Dacanay noted.
-30-