In September 2000, member states of the United Nations (UN) gathered at the Millennium Summit to affirm commitments towards reducing poverty and the worst forms of human deprivation. The Summit adopted the UN Millennium Declaration which embodies specific targets and milestones in eliminating extreme poverty worldwide.

To help track progress in the attainment of the 8 goals and 18 targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) over the period 1990 to 2015, experts from the United Nations Secretariat and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Overseas Economic  Cooperation  and  Development  (OECD)  and  the

World Bank identified and selected a set of time-bound and measurable indicators. Data series on the 48 MDG indicators are compiled to provide the basis for the preparation of progress reports by member states of the United Nations (UN) on the implementation of the UN Millennium Declaration.

In the Philippines, the assessment and compilation of MDG Indicators were done as part of the participation of the NSCB in the Workshop on Development Indicators held in Manila, Philippines in October 2001 and 2002 organized by the UNSD through the "United Nations Project on Strengthening Regional Capacities for Statistical Development in Southeast Asia."

In terms of relative data availability in support of Millennium Development Goals (MDG) the Philippines ranked first among the 11 countries in South-East Asia. Based on the 2003 report of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), the Philippines obtained a rating of 27.9% followed by Thailand with 25.2% and Indonesia with 24.6%.

Overall, the Philippines ranked fourth among all of Asia and the Pacific in terms of data availability for tracking progress towards the MDG in the region with Australia gathering 29.1%, Japan, 29.0%, and Republic of Korea, 28.7%. According to UN-ESCAP, the theoretical maximum is for a country to have 767 data values (59 series x 13 years) and a country is counted to have data available when data exist for one or more years. The Philippines, according to the ESCAP report, has a total of available 214 indicators. The MDG indicators and corresponding data series for the Philippines are being compiled by the NSCB and are available on the NSCB website at http://www.nscb.gov.ph/stats/mdg.

The UN ESCAP report, Important Information: Data Availability for Tracking Progress Towards the Millennium Development Goals in Asia and the Pacific was published in December 2003 to give an overview of the national and global monitoring system, and the availability of national level indicators in the different countries in the region as of 31 October 2003. The monitoring system will provide UN-ESCAP critical information for policy purposes and for the strengthening of data collection capacities in ESCAP and associate UN member countries.