MANILA — Philippine businessmen’s economic prospects improved in the second quarter of 2017 against the previous quarter on seasonal factors as well as higher orders and production volume, among others.
Data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Friday showed that results of the Business Expectations Survey (BES) for the second quarter of this year showed that confidence index rose to 43 percent from the previous quarter’s 39.4 percent.
In a briefing Friday, BSP Department of Economic Statistics (DES) Director Rosabel Guerrero identified expansion of businesses and new product lines, introduction of new and enhanced business strategies and processes, and inflows of investments with the continuing trust in government leadership as the other factors that boosted business confidence during the quarter.
Expectations for higher infrastructure spending by the government as well as more economic activities in line with the country’s hosting of the 30th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Leaders’ Summit last April also boosted the sentiment, the BSP said in a report.
Guerrero said business sentiments in the country during the current quarter echoed those in Hong Kong, South Korea, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
“The more positive outlook of businesses is broad-based across geographical areas, across production sectors, across business types and across employment size,” she said.
However, the latest business outlook is lower than year-ago’s 48.7 percent.
With the improved quarter-on-quarter business outlook, Guerrero remains optimistic on the sustained growth of the domestic economy after the 6.4 percent output, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), in the first quarter of this year.
She said correlation of the index for the current quarter and the next quarter against GDP is “statistically significant” at 0.66 percent and 0.51 percent, respectively.
Against the BES inflation index, employment rate and exchange rate, the correlation is 0.50 percent, 0.76 percent, and 0.54 percent, respectively.
Results of the survey also showed that respondents expect the peso to depreciate against the US dollar, and for the peso borrowing rate and inflation rate to go up both this and the next quarter.
The survey was done from April 3 to May 16, 2016 and was participated in by 1,485 companies nationwide.
