The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) – La Union Provincial Statistical Office carries out the October 2020 round of the Consumer Expectations Survey (CES) as a joint undertaking with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on October 1 - 13, 2020 amidst the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The CES is a household-based survey on consumers’ assessment of their family income, financial situation, and the economic condition of the country and serves as a complementary survey to the Business Expectations Survey (BES) of the BSP. The PSA’s responsibility is to undertake the data collection and encoding of the questionnaires while the generation of tables and analysis of the results are done by the BSP.

The CES is conducted on a quarterly basis adopting the use of Computer Aided Data Collection System (CADaCS) and is administered on a sample basis at the household level drawn through a stratified multi-stage random sampling with a total sample of about 5,000 households nationwide.   In La Union, a total of four barangays consisting 64 sample households will be visited/enumerated by two hired Statistical Researchers (SRs).

The survey seeks to: provide a quick and regular assessment of the financial condition of consumers and economic condition of the country at present and in the near future, from the consumers’ own viewpoints; generate forecasts in the direction of the country’s economic activity based on consumers’ outlook in the current quarter, next quarter and the next 12 months; provide quick and regular assessment of consumers’ confidence in terms of their income and expenditures as well as their outlook on key economic indicators closely monitored by the BSP such as inflation, exchange rate and interest rates; provide quick and regular assessment of the saving condition of consumers at present; and provide a quick and regular assessment of the outstanding debt situation of the household head, their spouse/partner, their children and other family members at present.

Relative to the COVID-19 crisis, the PSA assures that all hired SRs are in good health condition and will adhere with the minimum health standards as well as precautionary measures at all phases of survey operation.

The PSA enjoins the support of the Local Government Units (LGUs) and cooperation of sample households to provide truthful information for complete and accurate survey end result. Respondents are assured that all data to be collected in the 2020 CES survey shall be considered privileged communication and such shall be inadmissible as evidence in any proceeding as stipulated in Section 26 of RA 10625.

Sgd. DANITES E. TEÑIDO, Ph.D.
Chief Statistical Specialist