Manufacturing remains top income generator in Visayas

CEBU, Philippines - Manufacturing remains the top income generator in Central Visayas based on the 2006 Census on Philippine Business and Industry (CPBI) result recently released by the National Statistics Office.

The top five also include Wholesale and Retail Trade, Electricity, Gas and Water, Real Estate and Transport, Storage and Communications, which reflected the same in the entire country.

During the regional dissemination of the census results in Cebu, provincial statistics officer Jessamyn Anne A. Alcazaren of NSO Bohol, in her presentation of the preliminary results, showed that the top five productive sectors in the region included Financial Intermediation, Electricity, Gas and Water Supply; Other Community, Social, & Personal Services; Manufacturing, and Transport, Storage and Communication.

In the country, the top five productive sectors included Electricity, Gas and Water Supply; Financial Intermediation, Transport, Storage and Communications; Mining and Quarrying and Manufacturing.

 The same census results also bared that the number of establishments in the country dropped by 19.7 percent while employment decreased by four percent in 2006 as compared to the economic performance in 2005.

Manufacturing likewise leads the top employers in Central Visayas followed by real estate, wholesale and retail trade, private education, and hotels and restaurants.

However, Professor Fernando C. Fajardo of the University Of San Carlos Department Of Economics said that the data presented by NSO does not totally reflect the real situation of the country’s entire business community.

 He said that considering the Philippines as a third world economy, a bulk of our enterprise are concentrated on the establishments with less than 20 employees which mostly belongs to the informal sector.

“The data will be helpful to the national level in decision making but for the local level, the local government units and the provincial level will not have reliable data that will be useful to mobilize them to act and respond accordingly regarding the recession, and the problems of unemployment,” said Fajardo.

NSO also launched its 2008 Annual Survey on Philippine Business and Industry (ASPBI) and the 2008 Survey on Information and Communication Technology (SICT) that will be undertaken on May to June this year and results will be released in 2010.

The 2006 CPBI is the 14th in the series of economic censuses, which was first conducted in 1903 and it is used to formulating and monitoring plans and policies in the attainment of national and regional economic goals and determining and comparing regional economic structures and performances, said Ronaldo C. Taghap, Provincial Statistics Officer (PSO) of NSO Siquijor.

The census covered 14 economic sectors defined under amended 1994 Philippine Standard Industrial Qualification (PSIQ), namely: construction, wholesale and retail, hotels and restaurants, agriculture, hunting and forestry; fishing, mining and quarrying; electivity, gas and water; manufacturing, transportation, storage and communication; financial intermediation, real estate, education, health and social work; and community and social services.

The census also covers only formal sectors which include corporations and partnerships, cooperatives and foundations, single proprietorship with employment of 20 and above and its uses establishment as a unit of enumeration, said Taghap.