PH to adjust inflation, GDP baseline starting 2026
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) will change again the base year used to calculate inflation and gross domestic product (GDP) so that key data could better capture the latest economic conditions.
At a press conference on Wednesday, National Statistician Claire Dennis Mapa said 2023 would be the new base year that the PSA would use for the computation of the consumer price index (CPI)—a gauge for inflation—and for GDP accounting beginning January 2026.
That would mark another adjustment in the reckoning year following the previous rounds of rebasing in 2020 and 2022, when the base year for measuring inflation and GDP had been changed to 2018.
“The technical staff are already doing the preparatory work,” Mapa said.
In the case of the CPI, a base year is a reference period at which the index number is set to 100. It is the reference point of the index number series.
In GDP accounting, the base year provides the reference point to which future values of GDP are compared.
The PSA implements rebasing every six years. For the CPI, such changes are done to reflect the latest composition of goods and services commonly purchased and availed of by households across provinces and highly urbanized cities in the country.
It also ensures that the expenditure patterns of households are updated.
For GDP accounting, rebasing is meant to capture changes in the country’s economic landscape.
Latest data showed that the CPI was steady at 2.9 percent in January, with declining rice prices making a significant contribution to muted consumer price increases.
Meanwhile, GDP expanded at an average rate of 5.6 percent for the entire 2024, a little faster than the 5.5-percent growth in 2023. But the latest reading fell short of the revised 6-to-6.5-percent goal of the Marcos administration, marking the second year of below-target GDP growth.
Data showed the economy was not able to muster enough power at the last minute to hit at least the low end of the official target range, no thanks to the onslaught of powerful typhoons.
The statistics agency reported that GDP had expanded by 5.2 percent in the fourth quarter, unchanged from the preceding three months and lower than the year-ago print of 5.5 percent.
