AS The Manila Times hosted our highly anticipated midyear economic forum on Tuesday, thoughts naturally turned to the health of the Philippine economy, its progress over the past year, and its prospects for the rest of this year and beyond. From where we sit, the story overall seems to be a very positive one, and as anticipated, our distinguished speakers largely shared the same view.

However, it has also been the case that the story of the economy, its growth, its potential and how to get there, is an incomplete one. We have long believed that the conventional measures of economic progress, chiefly the regular reporting of gross domestic product (GDP) growth, are not entirely sufficient. GDP does serve well as a credible thumbnail picture of the economy, but it is derived from a rather narrow set of output and consumption figures and is inevitably an ex-post view, something which is very difficult to use for the purposes of planning.