BSP calls on households to participate in crucial survey
By LEE C. CHIPONGIAN
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on Tuesday, Aug. 23, strongly encouraged targeted households to join its 2021 Consumer Finance Survey (CFS) to monitor their assets, liabilities, incomes, and expenditures during the pandemic.
The BSP seems to be having difficulty gathering CFS data for the period 2020 and 2021. It aims to complete its data collection by end-December 2022 via RLR Research and Analysis Inc. (RLR), an independent market research firm.
“The BSP is authorized to require from any person or entity any data for statistical and policy development purposes under Section 23 of Republic Act (RA) No. 7653 (The New Central Bank Act), as amended by RA No. 11211, subject to confidentiality laws,” it reminded the public on Tuesday.
The BSP’s CFS includes data on the financial conditions of households and what are financial and non-financial assets owned. It will also keep track of how much households borrow and their sources of credit. The survey also includes household income, spending and insurance coverage.
The BSP also assured targeted households that the data collected is for BSP use only. “It will not be made available to any person or entity outside the BSP, whether public or private, except under a court order or such conditions as may be prescribed by the Monetary Board,” said the BSP.
“The BSP encourages the selected households to extend their full support and cooperation for the said survey,” it also said, adding that the survey initiative has been reviewed and cleared by the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Based on the latest CFS using 2019 data and released in 2021, mid-range salaried Filipino households’ most valued assets are their house and lot and other real estate such as farm and land.
The 2018-2019 survey showed that the most popular transportation owned by households are motorcycles and almost every household had a television set and a mobile phone.
However only 22.6 percent said they had access to financial products and services such as insurance/pension and deposit accounts while 28.2 percent of households keep their cash at home for emergency. Since this survey was conducted before the pandemic, less than one percent of households had electronic money or e-money accounts and those that have are tied to their deposit accounts with banks.
Pre-pandemic, the average monthly income for a household of five was P22,000. About 72.1 percent are spent on food, 23.9 percent on housing and utilities and 10.5 percent on transportation. Only 4.8 percent of income are allotted on health expenses.
Basically, the purpose of the survey is to support the central bank’s objective of implementing realizable policies towards financial inclusion. The first CFS was conducted in 2014.
On Monday, Aug. 22, the BSP released the latest Financial Inclusion Survey (FIS) covering 2021 data wherein it revealed that there are now 42.9 million adult Filipinos with transactional accounts or 56 percent of the adult population versus only 29 percent in the 2019 FIS.
The BSP, which releases the FIS every two years, said the latest number of financial transaction accounts is the highest growth to date. Ownership of a formal account is a basic indicator of financial inclusion.