NSCB Resolution No. 5
Series of 2007

APPROVING THE MODEL-BASED ESTIMATION METHODOLOGY FOR THE ANNUAL FOOD AND POVERTY THRESHOLDS

 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 Resolution No. 9, Series of 2000, the NSCB regularly releases annual food and poverty thresholds at the national, regional and provincial levels upon availability of price data from the National Statistics Office (NSO) and the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS);

WHEREAS, due to the usefulness of the food and poverty thresholds for targeting and planning purposes (e.g., determination of minimum wage, negotiations for collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), identification of beneficiaries of government programs, etc.), there is a need for a more timely release of the thresholds, preferably before the start of the year;

WHEREAS, the NSCB, in keeping with its mission to be ever relevant to its stakeholders, developed, through statistical modeling techniques, a procedure that will compute for advance estimates of food and poverty thresholds even before price data for the reference year are made available by the NSO and BAS;

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, initially reviewed the proposed methodology in its meeting on 5 May 2006 and the revised/improved methodology in its subsequent meetings on 8 August and 20 November 2006;

WHEREAS, after a series of refinements and improvements, the TC-PovStat, in its meeting on 10 January 2007, approved in principle the proposed procedure as an interim methodology, subject to further improvements and refinements as more data inputs become available;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED AS IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED, that the Board approve the recommendations of the TC-PovStat for the NSCB to: 

a) Generate model-based food and poverty thresholds for both FIES and non-FIES years to be released as preliminary estimates based on the following schedule:

i) Release the 2006 and 2007 preliminary estimates upon approval of the methodology (Annex BR-05-2007-01);

ii) Starting with the 2008 preliminary estimates, release the figures in December preceding each reference year;

b) Generate and release final estimates of food and poverty thresholds as follows:

i) For FIES years, release menu-based thresholds applying actual prices from BAS and NSO;

ii) For non-FIES years, release revised model-based thresholds based on an updated model;

iii) Release these three sets of final estimates (for the last FIES year and two prior non-FIES years) in May following the FIES year;

BE IT RESOLVED FURTHER, that:

1. for FIES years, the NSO and the BAS regularly provide the NSCB with the necessary data support in the computation of menu-based thresholds, i.e., provincial price data, provincial CPI, and other data inputs, in February following each reference year;
2. the NSCB conduct a review of the model-based estimation methodology (to include the possibility of adopting domain-based models, address limitations of the methodology, among others) starting in December 2007 and thereafter, in May following each FIES year in accordance with the attached schedule (Annex BR-05-2007-02);
3. subject to availability of funds, the NSCB conduct statistical advocacy and public information activities that present the limitations of the methodology towards appreciation of model-based estimation of food and poverty thresholds among data users, in partnership with other government agencies, specifically the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas;  and
4. the NSCB continue to generate poverty incidence estimates for FIES years using the menu-based thresholds pursuant to NSCB Resolution No. 1, s. 2003, to be released in accordance with the schedule under the system of designated statistics.

Approved this 14th day of February 2007, in Pasig City.

Attested by:

ROMULO A. VIROLA
Secretary General