The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has developed an enhanced version of the e-Presyo, an online price monitoring system, to ensure a faster and more efficient gathering and management of data on prices, and accurate reports generation.
Created in 2015, the e-Presyo serves as a repository for current prices of Basic Necessities and Prime Commodities (BNPCs) that are being monitored by DTI offices nationwide.
The e-Presyo allows the general public to access the system, check for establishments that sell the BNPCs, and helps them locate specific stores that sell such products at lower prices or within the Suggested Retail Prices (SRPs).
Over time, the e-Presyo, like any other software, manifested system issues such as data loss, slow software performance, and difficulties in data encoding and report generation.
In 2021, the DTI began the e-Presyo enhancement project in collaboration with the University of the Philippines Public Administration Research and Extension Services Foundation, Inc. – Regulatory Reform Support Program for National Development (UPPAF-RESPOND), a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) grantee.
The enhancement includes building, testing, and turnover of a new e-Presyo within UPPAF’s Supply Chain Analytics System (SCAn), retaining its existing features but with improvements to optimize collecting, processing, and storing of real-time prices/inventory of BNPCs.
“Since the release of e-Presyo in 2015, our monitors nationwide have been able to encode and easily generate data as needed during the declaration of a state of calamity. This also aided in the analysis of BNPC prices across the country,” said DTI secretary Ramon Lopez.
He added, “Considering the limited resources and manpower of DTI, and recognizing the advancements in digital technology, we rely on the cooperation of retailers on crowd sourcing and real-time sourcing of data to ensure reasonable prices for consumers.”
