A recent national survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) revealed that around 48 percent of adult Filipinos believe that the country’s economy will improve over the next 12 months.
The SWS survey, conducted from December 10 to 14, 2022, also showed that 33 percent of Filipinos said the economy will stay the same, while only 9 percent said it will worsen over the same period.
The December 2022 survey yielded an “excellent” Net Economic Optimism score of +40, which was 1 point below the excellent +41 in October 2022.
The Net Economic Optimism was highest in Metro Manila (+47), followed by Mindanao (+45), Balance Luzon, (+40), and the Visayas (+27).
“Net Economic Optimism tends to be higher among those with more years of formal education. It is higher among those who either graduated from college or took post-graduate studies,” SWS said.
Meanwhile, the same survey found that 49 percent of Filipinos are optimistic that their quality of life will improve in the next 12 months, 37 percent said it will stay the same, 5 percent said it will worsen, while the remaining 8 percent did not give an answer.
The SWS noted that net economic optimism is higher among personal optimists.
SWS also revealed that 34 percent of Filipinos said their quality of life was better than 12 months before, 26 percent said it got worse, and 39 percent said it was the same compared to a year ago.
The 4th Quarter 2022 SWS survey used face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults, 18 years old and above, nationwide.
It had sampling error margins of ±2.8 percent for national percentages and ±5.7 percent each for Balance Luzon, Metro Manila, Visayas, and Mindanao.
