Businesses upbeat on economy for Q4

Business sentiment has become even more positive given the upcoming holidays but optimism is expected to take a dive — but overall remain upbeat — once the new year starts, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported on Tuesday.

The confidence index (CI) — computed as the percentage of firms that answered in the affirmative minus those who replied otherwise in the BSP’s latest Business Expectations Survey — improved to 43.3 percent for the last three months of 2017, up from 37.9 percent three months earlier and the 39.8 percent recorded last year.