THE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) announced on Thursday that it is starting to adopt so-called user-based “mobility indicators” to track economic activity in the country, especially in relation to pre-Covid levels.
In a press briefing, BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said the new strategy of using mobility indicators is part of BSP’s aim to expand its surveillance toolkit and gather more data on the pace of the country’s return to prepandemic activity amid the gradual opening of the economy.
Mobility indicators are datasets gathered by navigational applications like Google and Apple on people’s movements.
“Ensuring access to relevant and timely data to assess economic activity is crucial amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which has limited people’s mobility and altered the functioning of the economy,” Diokno said.
For example, early assessment from the BSP using Apple mobility data showed that the Philippines is among the slowest in the Asean-5 to regain its mobility in 2020.
As of December, the Philippines has the lowest mobility indicator followed by Singapore and then Thailand. Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia are already back to pre-Covid mobility levels.
“These indicators provide a more granular and real-time look at consumer and business activity. They complement the usual macroeconomic indicators like manufacturing indices and gross domestic product (GDP),” Diokno said.
The governor also said in his presentation that Google’s Community Mobility, on the other hand, shows the level of sectoral activity. It showed that in the Philippines, the mobility index for grocery and pharmacy temporarily reached prequarantine levels in December due to the onset of the holiday season.
Transit, malls, parks and workplaces, meanwhile, all had below-quarantine mobility levels for the entire 2020.
“Data on mobility indicators offer a way for authorities to gauge the return of economic activity to normal as the economy reopens. Mobility data offer much potential in providing inputs for policymaking under the new economy,” Diokno said.
Read full article on BusinessMirror
