With traffic jams and port congestion an all-too-common sight in the Philippine capital, there is growing sentiment that development should be moved away from the metropolis and into other regions. What does the data, particularly regional accounts from the Philippine Statistics Authority, have to say?
Figure 1: (Photo: Storm Crypt/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
First, let’s try to frame the overcentralization problem in data. One way to do that is through regional income accounts - particularly GRDP (gross regional domestic product) per capita - and see whether the NCR’s measures far outstrip the rest.