REAL-TIME SENTIMENTS. News articles relating to business, economy, and finance will be used by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to gather real-time sentiments and help monetary authorities in their policy and decision-making. BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said the news articles will be gathered from reputative dailies in the country. (PNA file photo)
MANILA – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is set to utilize sentiments on the macroeconomic front through news articles to further strengthen its economic policy formulation.
In a virtual briefing on Thursday, BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said the News Sentiment Index (NSI) is part of the central bank’s Big Data Roadmap initiative aimed at ensuring that treatment and handling of all types of data across the central bank are uniform, compliant with domestic laws, and is consistent with best practices.
“The NSI will equip the BSP with a cost-effective and efficient data gathering and index generation solution for monitoring real-time economic developments, and which can serve as an important input for economic policy formulation,” he said.
Diokno said data collection and processing will be done using a computer program that will also determine whether the use is positive, neutral, or negative.
He said the business and economy-related news articles will be gathered from reputable domestic media outlets that have received citations and awards both here and abroad.
“The BSP ensures that it uses only truthful and fact-checked data in its decisions and policies,” he added.
Diokno said the use of NSI follows several central banks overseas, such as the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Bank of Korea, and the Reserve bank of Australia.
He said BSP, to date, is on the exploratory stage in using big data and noted there are several promising use-cases for this.
Diokno said the NSI will supplement the quarterly consumer and business expectation surveys.
“The News Sentiment Index will complement, will supplement the confidence index data during our quarterly consumer and business expectation surveys. The purpose of the News Sentiment Index is to narrow information gap by providing us with sentiment data more frequently. This information will allow us to intervene and make timely policy decisions based on the prevailing economic environment,” he added. (PNA)
