4 February 2020 – The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) conducted a Data Dissemination Forum on the results of the recently completed 2017 Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry (ASPBI) and the 2017 Survey on Information and Communication Technology (SICT). The Forum was held on 29 January 2020 at The Heritage Hotel Manila and was graced by 100 participants and stakeholders.
The ASPBI is intended to provide data on employment, compensation, revenues, sale, and inventory for national accounts estimation. The highlights of the results of the 2017 ASPBI was presented by PSA’s Assistant National Statistician, Dr. Divina Gracia Del Prado.
Dr. Ramonette Serafica of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) provided substantial comments and inputs on the said survey mainly focusing on the suggestion to improve the scope and include establishments with employment below 20 to better grasp the current circumstance of the country’s business environment.
Specifically for the Survey on Information and Communication Technology (SICT) there were 910 accounted establishments with 135,496 employees. The total income for the sector reached Php 595.5B with wireless telecommunications activities as the leading industry. The sales from e-commerce was approximately Php 566.1M with computer programming, consultancy and related activities contributing 65.4% of these sales.
The SICT aims to gather information on the availability, distribution, access, and utilization of ICTs in the information economy. In the 2017 SICT results, presented by Deputy National Statistician Rosalinda P. Bautista, it was determined that with the 3,648 establishments, 99.6% utilize computers and communication equipment in their business operations, 97.9% with internet access, and 43.6% of which have websites of their own. Also, 22.2% of these establishments engage in e-commerce via the Internet, 27% via cellular mobile phone, and 39.9% with social media accounts.
One of the major comments of Dr. Francis Mark Quimba, Senior Research Fellow of the PIDS, is to consider providing a single, general perspective on the core and non-core classification of ICT industries to create uniform understanding of the significant concepts of the survey. More details and information on the ASPBI and SICT are accessible through psa.gov.ph.
The forum was attended by the Department of Information and Communications Technology representatives from the National ICT Planning, Policy and Standards Bureau: Ms. Mychaella Jan May Aguilar, Ms. Jasmin Eleazar, Mr. Joel Dela Paz, and Mr. Jay Narciso. This event gave the participants an opportunity to keep abreast with the current data and information to further promote data-driven ICT governance.
