The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said Friday results of separate surveys show that businesses turned less upbeat in the first quarter of 2024, while consumers remained cautious amid concerns over inflation and job availability.
Results of the latest Business Expectation Survey showed that the overall confidence index declined to 33.1 percent in the first quarter of 2024 from 35.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023.
“This is reflective of the combined decrease in the percentage of optimists and increase in the percentage of pessimists,” the BSP said.
The outlook for the second quarter is more bullish, as the overall CI rose to 48.1 percent from 38.2 percent. The firms’ more optimistic outlook in the second quarter was attributed to their expectations of higher demand for products and services, completion of more projects due to a more conducive business environment and seasonal uptick in business activities in the tourism and fisheries sub-sectors during the summer and open fishing seasons.
Other factors are the business expansions and development of new products and easing inflation.
Meanwhile, consumer sentiment was less optimistic for the second quarter of 2024 and the next 12 months as the CIs declined to 2.7 percent and 13.4 percent from 5.6 percent and 15 percent, respectively, in the fourth quarter of 2023 survey round.
The BSP said the weaker outlook of consumers for both periods could be attributed to their anticipation of faster increase in the prices of goods, fewer available jobs and lower income.