Philippines - Retail Sales

For the Philippines, domestic trade is the flow of commodities between the country's islands by water and air (analogous to international merchandise trade). Our extract includes value, quantity (mass), and commodity detail.

• Classification: PSCC (Philippine Standard Commodity Classification)
• Measurements:
  • Thousands of Philippines pesos (Ths. PHP)
  • Metric tons (Tons)
• Adjustment: Not seasonally adjusted (NSA)
• Native frequency: Quarterly
• Date range: Uniformly 2001Q4 to 2020Q4

The source writes:

In 1974, the National Accounts Staff of the National Economic and Development Authority initiated the Regional Income Accounts Project for the purpose of presenting the regional disaggregation of the nation's domestic products. The dearth of statistics at the regional level, however, prevented the project from presenting the inflow and outflow of goods for the various regions. In 1976, an Inter Agency Committee on Transportation and Communication Statistics (IACTCS) was created to develop a rational and integrated statistical system for the combined sector. The Committee was chaired by NEDA with National Statistics Office (formerly National Census and Statistics Office), Bureau of Customs (BC), Philippine Ports Authority (PPA), Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA), Ministry of Public Works, Transportation and Communication (MPWTC), Philippine Airlines (PAL), and Philippine National Railways (PNR) as members.

The NSO has been recording the movement of commodities by port of origin and port of destination as contained in the Bureau of Custom's coasting manifests (BC Form No. 78) since 1968. However, the data contained in these documents were insufficient as far as the needs of the IACTCS were concerned. Moreover, data gathering activities for the generation of water transport statistics were being independently conducted on basically the same items by the NSO, PPA, BC, and MARINA. To ensure adequacy of information and to avoid duplication of functions the NEDA, NSO, BC, PPA, MARINA AND MPWTC agreed to revise the manifests and the system for generation of statistics through the Integrated System for Coastwise Shipping Statistics (ISCSS) Project.

The ISCSS was designed to evolve into an integrated system designed to efficiently and effectively collect, process and disseminate reliable domestic shipping, trade and port statistics. It was formalized in March 1979 with the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement by the heads of the participating agencies. Guided by the concept of decentralized data processing, project activities were delineated as follows:

1. The PPA Operations staff was responsible for the proper and appropriate filling out of the various forms and documents;
2. PPA was responsible for the collection and initial processing (coding) of documents, but in ports where there were no PPA officials, the function was to be attended to by Bureau of Customs personnel;
3. NSO was to verify coded documents and provide the computer services required by the ISCSS; and
4. The NSO was to provide the PPA and MARINA with the tabulations they need.

1.2 AIR TRADE STATISTICS

Through the initiative of the IACTCS, meetings were arranged with officials of the Philippine Airlines (PAL), the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), and other domestic airlines, to discuss on the feasibility of collecting cargo manifests as source documents in compiling airway statistics.

On October 1,1976 the NEDA, NSO and PAL signed a memorandum of Agreement where the parties agreed on the following:

1. PAL was to provide the NSO with their Air waybills (AWB) and other related source documents; and
2. NSO was to take charge of both manual and electronic processing and publication of results.

As part of this memorandum of agreement, PAL revised the AWB and added an extra copy to the usual set prepared to accommodate the project's requirements. Starting with the documents of September 1977, the project operationalized the collection and processing of data on commodities flowing through the air transport system. 

1.3 RAIL TRADE STATISTICS

The project activities geared toward the generation of rail trade statistics took off when NEDA and NSO personnel organized a working committee with the Philippine National Railway (PNR) to improve the data system on railway statistics. This committee worked on the revision of PNR forms, "Daily Report of Waybills Forwarded" and the "Express / Freight Shipping Order", to make them appropriate data gathering instruments for Rail Trade Statistics.

In August 1977, a training of PNR station agents on the filling out of the revised forms was conducted at the PNR Central Office. The PNR implemented the revised DRWF in October 1977 and submitted the results to the project for evaluation. By the end of 1977 the systems specifications was completed. On the following year, the system for the collection and processing of rail commodity flow statistics was operationalized.

2. COVERAGE OF COMMODITY FLOW DATA

The trade data contained in this report pertain to the flow of goods through airports, seaports and railway stations in the country, whether for government or private use, or for commercial purposes.

The air waybills were collected from the forty-one (41) PAL - operated domestic airports while the Daily Report of Outgoing Shipments (DROS) for rail were gathered from 35 or 76% of the 46 PNR stations in the country.

Coasting manifests were collected from 45 major ports and 388 other active seaports, comprising 58.12% of the 745 ports listed by PPA all over the country. The remaining 41.88% are fishing ports which are excluded in the compilation of data. Detailed coastwise statistics by port presented in this publication, however, are limited to ports where loaded and / or unloaded cargoes amounted to P1M and above and to commodity items with values of P1M and above. Statistics for other ports and for other commodities are presented as aggregates. 

3. COLLECTION AND PROCESSING OF COMMODITY FLOW DATA

3.1 COASTWISE TRADE STATISTICS

Coastwise trade statistics is a compilation of data on commodities carried through the water transport system.

The source document for coastwise trade statistics is the Outward Coasting Manifests (Bureau of Customs Form No. 78), submitted by masters of vessels plying the inter-island ports to the collectors of PPA or their authorized representatives before the vessel leaves the port area. The NSO is provided with copies of these documents which are collected by NSO field personnel from the PPA Central Offices in the provinces. The documents collected are sorted, bundled, coded, edited and encoded in the NSO provincial offices. These are then forwarded to the NSO Central Office in Manila for further processing. The coasting cargo manifests contains information on the following:

1. Port of Origin
2. Port of Destination
3. Description of Commodity
4. Quantity
5. Value

Another source document is the Philippine Coastwise Passenger Manifests. Information on passengers commuting through the water transport system along with the BC Form No. 78 are collected when a vessel carries both cargo and passengers. Otherwise, only one document is collected.

3.2 AIR TRADE STATISTICS

Air trade statistics is a compilation of data on commodities carried through the air transport system.

Data source for airway trade is the AWB issued by PAL to every consignee.

The AWB contains, among others, the following information:

1. Station of origin and destination
2. Description of Commodity
3. Actual gross weight
4. Equivalent volume weight
5. Declared value

The acceptance and sales clerks of PAL prepares an extra copy of every AWB issued and the corresponding sales report are collected by NSO field personnel. Reports collected from the provincial sales offices are sorted, bundled, coded, edited encoded in the field before transmittal to the NSO Central Office. Documents collected from the Metro Manila sales offices are transmitted to and processed at the NSO National Capital Region (NCR), then diskettes forwarded to Central Office for further processing.

3.3 RAILWAY TRADE STATISTICS

Railway trade statistics is a compilation of data on the movements of commodities via the rail transport system.

The basic document used in generating the rail commodity flow statistics is the DROS (Daily Report of Outgoing Shipment) which is the summary of the daily cargoes shipped through the PNR. The information contained in this form are copied by PNR personnel from the express / freight shipping orders issued for the day. This form includes information namely:

1. Station of origin and destination
2. Description of commodity
3. Volume of shipments
4. Declared Value
5. Freight or express charges

These forms, accomplished by station agents, are collected by NSO field personnel. These are then sorted, bundled, coded, edited and encoded in the field before submission to the NSO Central Office for further processing.

4. COMMODITY CLASSIFICATION

The commodity classification used in the compilation of the data is the 1993 Philippine Standard Commodity Classification (PSCC) which is aligned with the UN Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) Rev 2.

The classification is presented in five levels of details: section, division, group, subgroup and item. Each commodity or commodity group is identified by a unique code number.

The code number of each commodity is so designed that the first digit identifies the section; the first two digits, the division; the first three digits, the group; first four digits, the sub-group; and the first five digits, the item.

5. OTHER AVAILABLE DATA

Aside from the tabulations presented in the publication, other detailed tables in computer print-outs for the year are available at the Business and Services Statistics Division, Industry and Trade Statistics Department, NSO. Also, monthly and quarterly tabulations are made available to users within the following quarter. An annual publication containing summary tables comes out at a two-quarter lag.

Copies (in computer print-outs, tapes or diskettes) of tables regularly produced and user-oriented tables can also be made available to requesting parties at cost and upon approval of the Administrator, National Statistics Office, Sta. Mesa, Manila.

Attribution

• http://www.census.gov.ph/data/technotes/notedomst.html (dead link)

Further reading

At the source:

• Philippine Standard Commodity Classification (PSCC)