NSCB Resolution No. 11
Series of 2007

APPROVING THE METHODOLOGY FOR THE GENERATION OF
POVERTY STATISTICS FOR THE BASIC SECTORS

WHEREAS, reducing poverty remains as the overarching goal of the government;

WHEREAS, Executive Order No. 352 mandates the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) to regularly generate and release the country’s official poverty statistics;

WHEREAS, pursuant to NSCB Resolutions No. 9, s. 2000, and No. 1, s. 2003, official poverty statistics regularly released by the NSCB include annual food and poverty thresholds and poverty incidences and other measures of the depth and severity of poverty every three years at the national, regional and provincial levels;

WHEREAS, one of the demands from the official poverty estimation methodology is lower level and sectoral poverty statistics;

WHEREAS, the NSCB, in an attempt to further serve the needs of planners and policy makers, both at national and local levels embarked on a project entitled “Development of Poverty Statistics for the Basic Sectors” under the United Nations Development Programme’s Strengthening Institutional Mechanisms for the Convergence of Poverty Alleviation Efforts, Phase 2 umbrella project;

WHEREAS, during the 2nd regular meeting of the NSCB Executive Board where the results of the UNDP-funded project was presented, there was general agreement on the soundness of the proposed methodology as well as on the resulting estimates;

WHEREAS, the Technical Committee on Poverty Statistics (TC-PovStat), as the body tasked to study the methodologies and estimation procedures used in generating official poverty statistics and related indicators, reviewed in its meeting on 17 May 2007 and recommended for approval of the NSCB Executive Board, the proposed methodology, subject to further research and/or improvement activities to generate poverty statistics for the other basic sectors;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED AS IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED, that the Board approve the estimation methodology for the generation of poverty statistics for the basic sectors (Annex BR-11-2007-01), for adoption by all agencies concerned:

BE IT RESOLVED FURTHER, that:

1. the NSCB regularly generate poverty statistics for the basic sectors starting from 2006 and onwards, for years that the Family, Income and Expenditures Survey (FIES) is conducted;
2. the NSCB release the 2003 poverty statistics for the basic sectors upon approval of the methodology;
3. for FIES years, the NSO regularly provide the NSCB with the necessary data support in the computation of poverty statistics for the basic sectors, i.e., public use files of the FIES and the 4th quarter round of the Labor Force Survey (LFS) of the reference year; and
4. the NSCB, in consultation with the TC-Povstat, subject to availability of resources, conduct further research and/or improvement activities in coordination with concerned agencies to generate poverty statistics for the other basic sectors, which were not initially estimated due to data constraints.

Approved this 5th day of September 2007, in Pasig City

Attested by:

ROMULO A. VIROLA
Secretary General