The Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry is a continuing activity of the Philippine Statistics Authority. It generates the essential statistics required for economic planning and analysis. It collects and generates information on the levels, structure, performance and trends of economic activities of the formal sector of the economy. But because most of the sample establishments unfortunately do not know the importance of the survey, they just take it for granted.

There are three phases of the operation, namely, Distribution, Collection and Data Processing. During the distribution phase, the field personnel were very much excited of their assignments. Luckily only slight problems were encountered such as referrals to main office, stopped operation, Out of Scope establishments and erroneous assignment of forms.

After the tenth day from receipt of the questionnaires, the collection phase started immediately. But sad to know no one was able to collect any questionnaire. Several follow-ups were made. Here started the calvary of the field personnel since most respondents will just say not yet filled up because the person-in-charge is so busy or always out of the office or they were not able to contact the bookkeeper yet. There were so many “Alibis”.

For small establishments, the major problem is how to fill up the questionnaire since they have no background on bookkeeping. So as field personnel it is our responsibility to assist them.

The full implementation of Census Compliance Project (CCP) required issuance of notices of non-compliance  as a friendly reminder. For this year, some establishment were already issued with three notices and two sample establishments were given a final demand letter.

For the third phase which is the Data Processing, several  inconsistencies and lacking entries were found, so verification needs to be done. Mostly, during this period you can not easily contact the person in charge especially if through phone calls only. Hence, for best strategy, visit the establishments personally during follow-up and verification periods so that they will act on it immediately. Be patient enough.

From the result of the 2017 ASPBI and SICT operation, there were several non-good questionnaires such as Out of Scope, closed or stopped operation, duplicate and referral to main office establishments. There were good questionnaires which did not undergo the data processing because it is the Central Office who will process it such as Change form or sector and Consolidated Reports.

Until now there are few sample establishments who failed to submit the questionnaires. Maybe the establishments need data dissemination or incorporate their  commitment to comply the questionnaires on time in some local ordinances just to awaken them that it plays a vital role in our economy.