PSA clarifies methodology in clustering provinces of economic performance

The Province of Sorsogon cannot be considered one of the poorest provinces in the country among the poorest provinces of according to Philippine Statistic Authority Bicol Regional Director Cynthia Perdi amid reports in social media that it ranked 12th as the poorest province in the country.

The regional director clarified the category during a provincial board committee of the whole invitation as it was weary of the negative report that Sorsogon is one of the 12 poorest provinces in the country.

According to Perdiz the inclusion of Sorsogon in the subsistence incidence for not reaching the minimum food threshold because of160 families as severely poor but the threshold does not generally represent the poverty of the province.

She revealed that in their latest records Sorsogon ranked second in the fastest-growing economy in the country per capita income of families and has low inflation.

She said that the poverty level is divided into five clusters number 1 is the poorest province while Cluster 5 is the least poor. In this Cluster Sorsogon logs in Cluster 3 which is the middle place disputing its inclusion as one of the poorest provinces.

The news that Sorsogon is among the 12th poorest provinces was taken during the first semester of 2023 and not final. She also denied that her agency was not responsible for the FB news categorizing Sorsogon as such.

She reminds the media to be careful in dishing news stories regarding poverty incidence for there are parameters that need to be understood carefully and her agency does not allow the release of ranking regarding the estimate of poverty incidence.

Panning the quality of media report Perdiz said that the official poverty estimation methodology used by the agency to generate official poverty statistics has various variables such as the provincial food bundle, price data on the actual provincial prices of food items, and per capita income of families to know what cluster the province belongs when it comes to poverty incidence as well as subsistence incident was not taken into account