The Philippines still lags behind its Southeast Asian neighbors in terms of information and communications technology (ICT) development, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) said. NSCB Secretary-General Jose Ramon Albert cited data from the Measuring the Information Society Report 2013, which showed th
The Philippines still lags behind its Southeast Asian neighbors in terms of information and communications technology (ICT) development, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) said.
NSCB Secretary-General Jose Ramon Albert cited data from the Measuring the Information Society Report 2013, which showed that the country only ranked 7h among ASEAN.
Albert said the Philippines only had an ICT Development Index (IDI) of 3.34. It only bested Cambodia, Lao PDR and Myanmar, which had IDI scores of 2.30, 2.10 and 1.74, respectively.
“With this rank, the Philippines is the lowest among the largest economies in the Asean. It might be a concern that we have been outranked by Vietnam since 2010 and in 2011, Indonesia outranked us, as well,” Albert said.
Albert said in terms of Internet use, only 36.2% of Filipinos, used the Internet in 2012.
He said the data showed Singapore topped the list with 74.2%, followed by Malaysia and Brunei with 65.8% and 60.3%, respectively. At the bottom of the list is Myanmar with only 1.1 % of its population using the Internet.
International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates that only 10.1% of households in the Philippines have Internet access, lower than 12.5% in Vietnam and 65% in Brunei.
Albert said data also showed that Singapore has an 84.8% Internet- penetration rate among its households and Malaysia has 64.7%.
The NSCB, a statistical agency functionally attached to the National Economic and Development Authority, is the highest policy-making and coordinating body on statistical matters in the Philippines.