Philippines - Building Permits

For the Philippines, approved construction permits for residential and non-residential structures, for the country and subnational areas. Quarterly from 2001, monthly from 2018.

Data Buffet extracts only the count of permits, not the floor area, monetary value or cost of construction.

Active:

• Measurement: Unitary count (#)
• Adjustment: Not seasonally adjusted (NSA) 
• Native frequency: Monthly
• Start dates:
  • 2018m1 for most
  • 2022m1 for two categories (additions, alteration and repairs)
• Geo vintage: PSGC 2017
• Geo coverage:
• Country (IPHL)
• Region (17x IPHL_aa)
• All concept-geo pairs exist: No

Predecessors:

• Quarterly, three geo levels - 2001Q1 to 2023Q4 ("_23")

Global concept aliases:

• HPMT.IPHL
• HPMTR.IPHL
• HPMTN.IPHL

Data processing of approved building permits is done both manually and mechanically. Copies of documents collected from the offices of local building officials (LBOs) are properly controlled, sorted, edited and coded, folioed and encoded in the PSA provincial offices. During machine validation, inconsistent and invalid entries which are flagged in an error listing are corrected in the data file. This process is repeated until there are no more inconsistent or erroneous entries found in the error listing. The data files are then forwarded to PSA Central Office for validation, consolidation and generation of preliminary tables. Data files received after the cut-off dates of submission set for each quarter are included in the generation of annual tables.

Preliminary results are based from data files that have undergone data processing in the provincial offices and have been validated at the Central Office. The preliminary tables are revised to include building permit documents received after the cut-off period in the annual tabulation. 

Types of action included: New construction; addition (any new construction that increases the height or area of an existing building/structure); alteration and repair of existing structures.

Definitions

Building permit

a written authorization granted by the LBO to an applicant allowing him to proceed with the construction of a specific project after plans, specifications, and other pertinent documents have been found to be in conformity with the National Building Code (PD 1096).

Construction

refers to all on-site work done from site preparation, excavation, foundation, assembly of all the components and installation of utilities, machineries, and equipment of buildings/structures.

Building

any independent, free-standing structure comprised of one or more rooms or other spaces, covered by a roof and enclosed with external walls or dividing walls, which extend from the foundation to the roof.

Residential building

a building for which its major parts or more than half of its gross floor area is built for dwelling purposes. This type of building can be of the single type, duplex, apartment and/or accessoria,and residential condominium.

Non-residential building

commercial, industrial, agricultural, and institutional buildings.

Geo coverage

• Country (IPHL)
• Region (17x IPHL_aa)
• Province (IPHL_aaa)

Moody's Analytics supplements

During the 2018 vintage, for the NSA monthly national series, we constructed quarterly NSA and SA counterparts.

During the 2001-2023 vintage, for the quarterly count of permitted residential and non-residential dwelling units, we compute a seasonally adjusted counterpart.

Yes. Data are preliminary when first published.

Further reading

At the source:

• Construction statistics » Technical notes (2016)
• Construction statistics » Technical notes (2021Q1)

• Mar 2006 - Initial version.
• Aug 2012 - Addendum of SA supplements.
• 18 Sep 2024, Phillip Thorne - Change in frequency: Properties, Moody's Analytics supplements.