Gov’t number crunchers seek pay hike

The National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) is pushing for higher pay for government statisticians, saying their shrinking number could have repercussions on timely data gathering and policymaking in the future.

In a commentary issued on Friday, NSCB Secretary General Jose Ramon Albert said government statistical agencies—the NSCB, National Statistics Office (NSO), Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) and Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics (BLES)—had been suffering from a declining number of statisticians because of uncompetitive pay.

The NSCB, for instance, has seen its staff shrink to 117 as of end-2013 from 174 in 2005, Albert said.

The number of NSCB employees also is much smaller than the 224 positions in its plantilla, he said.

Greener pastures

Moreover, there are only 21 people in the NSCB working on the country’s national income accounts, which provide details of the income of the overall economy and of its various sectors, Albert said.

“Unless adequate steps are undertaken to address the human resource concerns, we would expect many statistical personnel to continue moving to greener pastures,” Albert said in the commentary titled “Are Official Statisticians Paid Enough?”

He said the country’s statistical agencies were losing personnel to the private sector,  international organizations and other institutions abroad.

Albert said the average monthly salary of entry-level statisticians in the four government offices in the Philippines was only $400 (about P17,600), lower than the Southeast Asian average of $450 (P27,000).

Data collected by the NSCB showed that the average monthly pay of division heads in the statistical agencies in the Philippines is $1,143.14 (about P50,000), lower than $1,355 (P59,700) in Thailand, $2,204 (P98,500) in Malaysia and $3,023 (P135,130) in Brunei.

It is, however, much higher than the $277.76 (P12,400) in Indonesia.

“While official statisticians love numbers, there appears to be some numbers that they love to hate—their salaries,” Albert said.

The bill consolidating the country’s four statistical agencies into one body, called the Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA), was signed into law late last year and its implementation rules were released last week.

The consolidation is aimed at streamlining operations concerning statistics. It is not, however, meant to cut down the number of employees because of the need to beef up the number of statisticians in the government.

Raise salaries

Albert said one way to help achieve the objectives of the PSA was to raise pay of statisticians.

Unless the matter is resolved, efforts of the PSA to improve delivery of statistics-related services would be dampened by the shrinking number of statisticians, he said.

The government is looking for the country’s first national statistician, who will head the PSA.

“The national statistician, whoever he or she may be, is faced with the humongous task  ahead not only in ensuring the quality of official statistics produced by the PSA, but also finding creative mechanisms to inspire official statisticians in continuing to serve the country with integrity, independence, and professionalism,” he said.