The NSO meanwhile appears to provide an alternative estimate of remittances in its quarterly national income accounts (NIA). But the NIA item where OFW remittances are commonly seen as being reflected - i.e., net factor income liom abroad (NFIA) - does not actually estimate remittances as such but rather records the total value of income earned by OFWs whether these are remitted or not. This total received income is recorded under the NFIA "compensation inflows" item and accounts for over nine-tenths of this item. It should also be noted that the NSO computes this using POEA data on deployments and salaries and so excludes very large numbers of undocumented workers (whose activity by definition is not monitored) as well as permanent migrants (who are no longer considered part of the Philippine economy). The various relevant migration- and remittance-related government agencies are currently in the process of improving their monitoring of these indicators. This includes efforts at harmonizing definitions, improving estimates of the overseas stock and inflows/ outflows of overseas Filipinos, and updating the sampling designs of the various surveys. At the same time there also needs to be caution in interpreting data on the Philippines liom international agencies such as the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). To begin with, the data they use comes from national data sources anyway and so suffers from any deficiencies therein. Aside from this there is also an attempt to come up with internationally comparable figures for migration and remittances and the definitions they use to make these data comparable across countries may not necessarily correspond with conventional domestic usage. Sources: IBON Foundation (2008), "OFWs, Remittances and Philippine Underdevelopment", IBON Facts & Figures: Special Release, Vol. 31, Nos 9 & 10, May l5 & 31,2008 Ruth C. Gonzaga (2006), "Overseas Filipino Workers' (OFWs) Remittances: compilation Practices and Future challenges", Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) paper for Theme III of the 2006 Conference of the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS), Topic G: Remittances as a National Income Source - Financial Aspects of Migration, September 6-8, 2006 Rayrnundo J. Talento (2004), 'Measurement of the Migrant Workers in the Philippine System of NationalAccounts (PSNA)", National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) paper for the Meeting of the Technical Subgroup of the Task Force on International Trade in Services, Movement of Natural Persons - Mode 4, United Nations Department of Economic and SocialAffairs Statistics Division, September 15-16,2004 6t