MANILA – Mobility indicators and big data analytics will now be among the major components of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) macroeconomic surveillance system as it shifts into the New Economy.
In a virtual briefing on Thursday, BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said central banks that rely heavily on standard economic and financial market data face challenges because of the pandemic.
“Data on mobility indicators offer a way for authorities to gauge the return of economic activity to normal as the economy reopens,” Diokno said.
These mobility trackers, some of which gather reports from smartphone apps from within a country or across countries, allow monetary authorities to quickly see patterns of activity across economic sectors, he said.
Aside from giving authorities an outlook on the changes in the economy, Diokno said the mobility index could also be used to compare survey-based reports, such as the purchasing managers’ index (PMI).
He said the BSP, for one, uses mobility indicators in checking sectoral forecasts for gross domestic product (GDP) growth “as they provide insights on how economic activity has evolved following the lifting of virus containment measures.”
Diokno said access to these important data to evaluate economic activity “is crucial amid the pandemic, which has limited people’s mobility and altered the functioning of the economy.”
“Mobility data offer much potential in providing inputs for policymaking. Indeed, the adoption of these high-frequency indicators was particularly useful under the new economy,” he added.
During the same briefing, BSP Department of Economic Research senior director Zeno Ronald Abenoja said part of the measures they use to evaluate economic activities is to check on policy uncertainty indices.
Abenoja said they look for numbers of these policy indices and the frequency based on a certain time and use the data as a “proxy for activity as we await standard macroeconomic and financial variables.” (PNA)
