Phl national accounts set for another round of revision

Manila, Philippines - The Aquino administration may implement another round of revision and rebasing in the national accounts to address issues and problems arising from the earlier changes.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga Jr. said the country’s system of national accounts would be better equipped to cope with changing requirements of data users.

“We may have to implement another round of revision and rebasing to address issues and problems associated with the new set of statistics. We must also make the Philippine System of National Accounts more robust and better equipped to cope with the emerging requirements of data users,” Paderanga said.

On Thursday, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) released preliminary results of the “revised and rebased” national accounts.

Part of the revision is that the NSCB now uses 2000 as base year instead of 1985 prices and include new components.

As a result of the revisions, the Philippine economy grew 7.6 percent last year, faster than the earlier reported 7.3 percent expansion in gross domestic product, which was based on constant 1985 prices.

During the press briefing on the revisions, government statisticians said the revisions were approved by the World Bank.

The revisions were presented in a forum where government statisticians also said they were dropping the term “gross national product” in favor of “gross national income” or GNI.

“The rebasing and revision in the national accounts were done in order to make it (the data) timely, relevant, reliable, accessible and comparable,” said NSCB secretary general Romulo Virola.

The country’s national accounts system has been revised at least four times, according to the NSCB. These revisions happened in 1968 (from base year 1955 to 1967), 1973 (from base year 1967 to 1972), 1995 (from base year 1972 to 1985) and 2011 (from base year 1985 to 2000).