Statistics on foreign trade are derived by the NSO from copies of import and export documents submitted by importers and exporters or their authorized representatives as required by law. In the current set-up, the NSO collects its source documents from the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) in all ports of the country and compiles them to come up with monthly export and import statistics. The provision of copies of all paper documents by the BOC is of paramount importance to the NSO in so far as this will help ensure the complete coverage of the foreign trade compilation.

The NSO merely reports exports and imports statistics from paper documents based on submissions by/collected from the source agency. This is a fact that holds true even in the recently released Merchandise Export Performance (Exports) for November 2003.

Unlike the exports data, the NSO has learned earlier that BOC-PEZA have electronic database files on imports generated from the Import Cargo System. The system qualifies importers on the basis of their applications for cargo transfers processed using the Automated Customs Operating System (ACOS). Thus, the NSO entered into a separate agreement with the BOC as early as April 2003 for the latter to regularly provide the NSO with said electronic files on imports starting with the January 2003 data.

The process of generating the foreign trade statistics

Copies of import and export documents collected by NSO personnel from the customs houses in all ports of entry in the Philippines are systematically controlled. Collected documents are sorted by month, by port, by single or multiple commodity entries and by value. The entries are assigned control numbers and undergo multi-stages of processing: 1) Coding; 2) Code Verification; 3) Computation; and 4) Computation Verification.

Reliability of NSO foreign trade statistics

The NSO merely compiles, computes and reports foreign trade statistics derived from administrative data. Therefore, it is largely dependent on the information that will be submitted by the main source agency, in this case the BOC. As far as the NSO is concerned, it maintains its position that it has always followed the well-known and accepted procedures and methodology for generating foreign trade statistics.

Were the November exports figures not properly reported?

Immediately after the NSO released the Philippine's exports figures for November, reactions, particularly from the electronics industry, came out on several newspapers on the alleged understatement. The NSO stood firm on its data (PR 2004-05 released January 9, 2004), provided deeper analysis and further explanation on the assumption that the data made available and on hand were complete and reliable. These are the exports documents that were gathered and compiled from the BOC. However, simultaneous with the agency's pronouncement, it also looked into the possible sources of data gaps, if any, following doubts raised by the electronics industry in consultation with other concerned agencies.

The findings

The NSO has discovered just recently that the BOC, Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) and the Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines (SEIPI) entered into a Joint Memorandum Agreement on April 20, 2002 to install the Automated Export Documentation System (AEDS) that would permit paperless recording of export transactions to streamline government processes at the Ecozones under PEZA. The order covers semiconductor and electronic export shipments from Ecozones loaded at NAIA. Although the NSO is mandated to produce official foreign trade statistics, it was not involved in the process. Section 3.9 of the said Memorandum states that "in lieu of providing the National Census Statistics Office and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) copies (paper) of the Export Declarations (ED), the BOC shall provide electronic files of EDs processed on a monthly basis to these government agencies". However, the BOC failed to comply with this provision.

Thus, on January 19, 2004 the NSO reported its findings to Secretary for Socioeconomic Planning and Director General of National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Romulo Neri. On the same day, DG Neri immediately wrote a letter to BOC Commissioner Antonio Bernardo, and called his attention on the fact that the NSO has yet to receive the electronic files of export declarations in compliance with Joint Memorandum Order No. 02-2002 on the AEDS, together with a request for the list of companies using the AEDS, including their location, and extent of their use; and, other information which can affect NSO's compilation system.

Meeting with concerned agencies

To further thresh out the issues, NSO officials sat down in a meeting organized by the DTI-Export Development Council (EDC) with the BOC, PEZA and Ekonek, the company which installed the AEDS, on January 21, 2004. The meeting confirmed the complaints aired by the electronics industry that there were discrepancies in the NSO report on export statistics. The data from the electronic files of the AEDS that should have been submitted by the BOC to the NSO was inadvertently omitted in the computation. The NSO received the first AEDS electronic file from the BOC only last January 23, 2004. With this new development, NSO will now include data files from the AEDS in its export statistics.

What to expect?

The NSO shall update its export figures for November 2003 to include the additional data from electronic files of the AEDS as provided by the BOC. The revised figures shall be released simultaneous with the export figures for December 2003 scheduled on February 4, 2004 and shall likewise include data from the AEDS. Moreover, the NSO shall also review the figures from January 2003 and updates shall be reflected in the 2003 Foreign Trade Statistics Annual Report targeted for release in April 2004.