One of 2 Pinoys bullish on 2017

Do you expect your life to improve in the next 12 months?

Kay Estella, an entrepreneur, said she looked forward to a flourishing startup business that she intended to achieve through hard work and self-discipline.

Public relations practitioner C.Y. Dizon, on the other hand, did not see any significant improvement owing to the absence of a projected salary increase in the coming months.

“I just have to maintain my daily budget allocation so I won’t run short of money,” Dizon said.

In the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, about one of two Filipinos expect their life to improve in the next 12 months and are optimistic about the economy despite the fact that actual “gainers” are only from Metro Manila and belong to Class ABC.

The nationwide poll done last Dec. 3-6 found 48 percent of 1,500 respondents to be optimistic that their life would improve while 3 percent said otherwise.

It yielded a “very high” personal net optimism (optimists minus pessimists) score of +45, slightly upped from +43 (46-percent optimists, 3-percent pessimists) in September, which SWS also rated as “very good.”

Thirty-seven percent said their life improved in the last 12 months and 21 percent said it got worse, to register a gainers-losers net score of “very good” +16 or 3 ticks down from +19 (36-percent gainers, 17-percent losers) in third quarter.

On the economy, 51 percent said “it will be better” while 8 percent said “it will be worse,” to result a net optimism score of “very good” +43, unmoved from September’s +44 (53 percent “it will be better,” 9 percent “it will be worse”).

First published in BusinessWorld, the survey had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.—RAFAEL L. ANTONIO