SWS logo / Reuters photo
MANILA, Philippines — Even as high inflation and rising prices of basic commodities continue to burden the country, 48 percent of adult Filipinos remain confident that the Philippine economy will improve in the next 12 months, according to a Social Weather Stations survey released on Thursday.
The survey, conducted through in-person interviews from Dec. 10 to 14 last year, further pointed out that only nine percent of the 1,200 respondents expect the economy to worsen. The remaining 33 percent remained neutral about it.
This brought the net economic optimism score to +40 (percentage of economic optimists minus the percentage of economic pessimists) — a point below the +41 in October 2022 but still deemed “excellent” by the SWS as it had been since December 2021.
Net economic optimism was the highest in Metro Manila with +47, but it notably declined by five points from its previous record at +52.
Mindanao was the next area with the highest net economic optimism at +45, followed by Balance Luzon at +40 and Visayas at +27.
“Net economic optimism tends to be higher among those with more years of formal education,” SWS explained.
It took note that more college graduates (+51) are confident that the economy will improve compared to the optimism of junior high school graduates (+40), non-elementary graduates (+37) and elementary graduates (+35).
Knowing the economic optimists
According to the SWS, net economic optimism is higher among the 49 percent of Filipinos who believe their quality of life will improve in 2023 (+65).
“Compared to October 2022, net economic optimism stayed at an excellent +65 among personal optimists,” it added.
READ: SWS: More Filipinos believe life will improve in next 12 months
The poll body said net economic optimism was similarly higher among those who believe their quality of life was better than 12 months before (+51).
READ: 34% of Filipinos said quality of life improved in past 12 months — SWS
It was also more inclined toward Filipinos who belong to families that consider themselves not poor (+42) than those who rated themselves poor (+36).
READ: 12.9M Filipinos feel ‘poor’ in Q4 2022 – SWS
After five months on a skyrocketing trend, Philippine inflation slightly dipped from 8.7 percent in January to 8.6 percent in February, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.
The inflation slowdown, it noted, was mainly because of slower price hikes in the transport commodity group, with an inflation rate that went down from 11.1 to nine percent over the same period.
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