Until the fourth quarter of 2010, the estimates of the various macroeconomic aggregates
under the Philippine System of National Accounts (PSNA) will still be using 1985 as Base
Year. As the official compiler of the PSNA, the National Statistical Coordination Board
(NSCB) has long recognized the need to improve the PSNA by among others, updating the
base year and migrating to the 1993 System of National Accounts (SNA). The NSCB started
its efforts in this direction more than ten years ago.
One of the key recommendations in the 1993 SNA is the use of Chain Volume Measures
(CVM) in lieu of constant price estimates. The use of CVMs, effectively makes it unnecessary
to “update” the base year, because when CVMs are used, the base year is changed every
year.
With the help of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Australian government and the
Australian Bureau of Statistics, the NSCB conducted various activities to implement the 1993
SNA recommendations including the use of CVMs. During the conduct of these activities, it
was realized that due to limitations of the price indexes compiled by the Philippine Statistical
System (PSS), it was not time to shift to CVMs. The NSCB thus decided that its efforts in
implementing some of the 1993 SNA recommendations should not include the use of CVMs
and instead be geared towards using a more updated year. In two regional conferences
organized by the ADB and UN ESCAP in Bangkok in 2000 and in 2001, it was recommended
that countries updating the base year of their national accounts use 2000/2005 as a common
base year.
Despite the technical and financial assistance provided by the development partners to
the PSS, due to manpower constraints faced by the NSCB as a result of the issuance of EO
366, the rebasing/revising of the PSNA with 2000 as base year will be completed only in May
2011.
This paper details the features of the preliminary 2000-based estimates of the PSNA
versus the 1985-based estimates and thus highlights the history that could be “rewritten” as a
result of the rebasing/revising process. It also presents the issues and concerns that have
been addressed as well as those that still need to be addressed in future PSNA improvement
activities and the way forward.