by Miriam G. Desacada
Catarman N.Samar–The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), through its Northern Samar office, warned the public to be careful of fake news, citing a blog site which claimed that a 2024 first quarter poverty statistics report had named Northern Samar as the top 3 among the 10 poorest provinces in the country.
PSA-Northern Samar officer-in-charge Maria Theresa Elizalde decried this blog post as fake news because, since 2018, Northern Samar has been no longer in the list of 10 poorest provinces.
Elizalde told the public that anyone can check the truth with the PSA—the government agency that handles and releases official statistical data—through its website (www.psa.gov.ph) where one can verify any data information relating to statistics such as poverty incidence.
The report, she said, was fake because the PSA does not release poverty statistics on a quarterly basis but by semester.
PSA’s latest poverty statistics report was for the first semester of 2023, and none yet for 2024. “The full 2021 PSA report of its survey results was not even released yet to this date,” she said.
“The post was indeed history because the data used was that of 2015 when Northern Samar was once included in the top 10 poorest provinces in the country,” Elizalde said.
In the PSA’s official poverty statistics of 2023, Northern Samar posted a 27.5 percent in poverty incidence among families, which was way lower than the 35.8 percent poverty incidence of Samar (western), and 35.6 percent of Eastern Samar.
In 2018, Northern Samar was taken off the list of the 10 poorest provinces in the country, when it registered a 30 percent poverty incidence, which further dropped to 23.1 percent in 2021.
From 2018 to 2021, Northern Samar no longer belonged to the 10 poorest provinces in the country, until the latest 2023 report, contrary to the fraudulent news posted in a blog, Elizalde said.
“The recent developments in Northern Samar pointed out to a better economic standing, as pushed by the incumbent administration of the Provincial Government,” she added. —Miriam G. Desacada