20 June 2022 – NABUNTURAN. As a policymaking body on statistical matters, the Provincial Statistical Committee (PSC) of Davao de Oro convened for their second meeting for the year at Comval Hotel, Nabunturan, Davao de Oro last June 2022. In the absence of PSC Chairperson Raymundo J. Pajarito, PSC Vice-Chairperson Abraham Enrico E. Gulay, Jr. presided the meeting with the 11 member agencies in attendance.

After the preliminaries, the PSC Secretariat gave updates on the matters arising from the first quarter meeting wherein the resolution to enjoin local government units (LGUs) to appoint data protection officer for the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) is already stipulated in the CBMS Council Resolution No. 06, Series of 2021 “Approving the Establishment of the Provincial and City/Municipal CBMS Coordinating Boards and their Terms of Reference” and have been adopted by each Municipal CBMS Coordinating Board (CCB) including the Provincial CCB; and the resolution to enjoin LGUs to affirm data sharing agreement regarding CBMS has also been reflected in Republic Act (RA) No. 11315 or the CBMS Act, Section 8 and in the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of RA 11315 in Rule IV Section 2.

Thereafter, the following business agenda were adopted by the committee which were then discussed alternately by the Supervising Statistical Specialist (SSS) Nova P. Vicente and CBMS Statistical Specialist II Christine A. Evangelio of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) Davao de Oro: (1) updates on the implementation of CBMS, (2) updates on the Provincial Product Accounts (PPA) in Davao de Oro, (3) presentation of the 2021 economic performance of Davao Region, (4) 2020 Census and Household Population (CPH) in Davao Region and Davao de Oro, (5) presentation and adoption of the PSA Board Resolutions as of June 2022, and other matters on the 15th National Convention on Statistics (NCS).

During the discussion, the committee raised concerns on the incomplete participation of municipalities to CBMS which was due to budget constraint and it was then suggested to re- present the concept of CBMS to the newly-elected local chief executives (LCEs) especially for the non-participating LGUs and to the newly-elected governess of the province in order to convince them of its importance and impact to planning and development programs. In addition, the issue on data gaps and difference in the methodology of the conduct of statistical surveys in the LGU and in PSA has been raised wherein the official data being acknowledged by the government agencies are that from the latter. With this, harmonization of data has been requested and for data gaps, the LGU will utilize their existing data if no available data is available from PSA.

The meeting ended with the approval of all business agenda presented for information and adoption and they are set to have their next meeting on the third quarter of the year.

For more information on PSC Davao de Oro Q2 2022 Meeting, please contact the Statistical Operation and Coordination Section (SOCS) with telephone numbers (084) 817-0172 and (084) 817-0347, or email address psa.davaodeoro@yahoo.com, cc: socs.psadavaodeoro@gmail.com.