FIVE of the top seven most urgent national concerns and the second most pronounced personal concern of Filipinos have to do with the economy, and most Filipinos believe the government should collaborate with the private sector to accelerate economic development.
These findings in several surveys were discussed alongside the need for multi-stakeholder cooperation and investments during the recent session of the Pilipinas Conference 2021: Sustaining Economic Recovery Post-Pandemic Towards 2022 and Beyond, which was organized by Stratbase ADR Institute.
“We continue to advocate for a more investment-driven growth,” said professor DindoManhit, StratbaseADRi president. “We need to establish a favorable environment for businesses so we can attract not only domestic but even foreign investments, generate jobs, spur consumption, and address generational inequality.”
A Pulse Asia survey conducted last September 6-11 identified Filipinos’ most urgent national economic concerns as controlling inflation (41%), increasing the pay of workers (40%), reducing poverty (29%), creating more jobs (25%) and providing assistance/ subsidy to those who lost jobs and livelihood because of COVID (19%).
The urgency of such economic concerns was shown by people’s declining ratings of the national administration’s performance, as shown by Pulse Asia’s comparative figures for June and September 2021.
Social Weather Stations found that 57% of Filipinos believe their quality of life got worse in the past 12 months, with 13% saying it got better and 29% saying it was unchanged. This drop was the steepest across all administrations since the SWS started doing the survey in the mid-1980s. The survey was done nationwide from September 12-16 this year.
