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SWS: 48% of Filipinos believe economy will improve in 2023
MANILA, Philippines — Nearly half or 48% of Filipinos believe that the economy will pick up in 2023, a survey by the Social Weather Station has found.
This outnumbered the 33% who said that it will stay the same and the 9% of Filipinos who said that the economy will worsen in the next 12 months, based on an SWS survey released on Thursday.
The survey results also showed that the economic optimism score in December 2022 was only one point below the +41 points recorded in October 2022.
According to SWS, the number of Filipinos seeing bright prospects for the economy has been at excellent levels or around +40 points and above since December 2021, according to SWS metrics.
This succeeded the relatively high number of economic pessimists during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, recording a mediocre economic optimism score in July (-9) and September 2020 (-5), respectively.
Among the different parts of the country, there was a larger increase in economic optimists in Mindanao, going to +45 points from +32 points, according to the SWS.
While the net economic optimism remained excellent in Luzon, it was down by nine points to +40 from +49, compared to October 2022. The economic optimism score in Visayas stayed fair, going to +27 from +25.
SWS also saw a few nuances in the responses of Filipinos with different educational attainment. For one, it saw that economic optimism “tends to be higher among those with more years of formal education,” with college graduates and those with post-graduate degrees having a +51 optimism score.
Those who finished elementary or had some high school education scored only around +35.
The economic optimism survey by SWS is different from its survey for personal optimism, which refers to Filipinos’ expectations of improvements in their personal quality of life.
Source: https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2023/03/10/2250700/sws-48-filipinos-believe-economy-will-improve-2023