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By Rommel C. Lontayao Reporter
FILIPINOS are not seeing better
days in the future, the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey
revealed.
The survey, conducted from March
28 to 31, found that while 29 percent of Filipinos remain optimistic
of improving their personal quality of life in the next twelve
months, the latest net personal optimism, at +6, went down badly
from +14 to +29 during September 2006 to December 2007,
respectively.
Moreover, 23 percent of Filipinos
believe that their condition will only get worse, while 45 percent
are expecting that the country’s economy will go down.
Optimism that the Philippine
economy will grow, on the other hand, slipped from 17 percent to 15
percent, bringing the Net Economic Optimism score down from –20 in
December 2007 to –29 in March 2008.
People from the Visayas notably
showed continued pessimism as their net economic optimism fell from
neutral –4 in September to –17 in December 2007, and to –37 in
March 2008.
It is of the same case in Metro
Manila (from –12 in September to –31 in December and –35 in
March) and Balance Luzon (from –9 in September to –24 in
December and –28 in March).
Mindanao, which has been a
hotspot of encounters between Muslim breakaway groups and the
military, also felt discouraged along the way with its neutral–3
in September and –8 in December, falling to –21 in March.
Economic pessimism also worsened
among class D (from –20 to –33) and class E (from –17 to
–24). Classes ABC, however, only registered a slightly lesser
negative rating (from –27 to –20).
SWS made it clear that
“optimism about the future economy is based on a question about
the economy in general and not about oneself in particular,” thus,
“it is normal to be more optimistic about one’s own quality of
life than about the economy as a whole.”
The latest SWS survey on the
optimism of Filipinos about their own future and that of the
Philippine economy was conducted using face-to-face interviews of
1,200 adults divided into random samples of 300 each in Metro
Manila, the Balance of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
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