Corrected BAS data says…

Bohol attains 112%

rice sufficiency ratio

TAGBILARAN CITY, March 25, 2011 (PIA) --- BOHOL last year attained 112% rice sufficiency level, not 138% as earlier reported.

And had it not been for Bohol’s asking about the data, the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) could have been giving their bent data and no one would have noticed.

But conscious about going into the contentious issue of a 134% rice sufficiency level and yet finding tons upon tons of rice inflow, Bohol local officials at the Capitol posted the inquiry.

The move also allowed BAS to uncover factor in their statistical formulation that can drastically alter their previously published data.

The same inquiry also showed to the agency that Boholanos and not only agencies with concerns related to rice are reading their statistics as a primary tool for policy development.

The inquiry made BAS realize that they only made three consumption level surveys in the span of time, one that matters on the rice sufficiency level of a province, says Governor Edgar Chatto while explaining the gist of the inquiry to BAS.   

By using the same data provided by the three consumption level surveys, BAS released a Bohol sufficiency level like 122%, some 15 years ago.

This figure drastically decreased to 85% in the next survey, upon which the data was used as baseline for subsequent statistics.

This also proved to be where BAS started churning out erroneous rice sufficiency data per province.

The realization pushed the aggie stat agency to re-assess that entire country’s agricultural statistics and found different results that their previous published statistics, said Governor Edgar Chatto.

BAS then advised the changes and a technical working group workshop was immediately called to come up with the corrected formula and straighten the figures.

The corrected data then were as follows:

In 2010, Bohol produced some 125,028 metric tons milled rice net from the 191,174 tons of palay at a milling recovery parameter of 65.40 used by BAS, a data from Engr. Maximino Servillon of Bohol BAS showed. 

That same year, National Food Authority data also showed 20,698 metric tons of inflow making a total of 130, 539 metric tons or rice made available for local consumption.

This then posted not the 134% rice sufficiency data which was released by BAS earlier but only 112%, one percent higher that the corrected rice sufficiency level attained in 2009 using the corrected formula.

The corrected data also showed Bohol attaining more than a hundred percent sufficiency ratio since 2005. (racPIABohol)