12 Jul 2024 – More Filipinos disappointed with government’s inflation response

Cristina Chi – Philstar.com
July 12, 2024 | 4:32pm

MANILA, Philippines — More Filipinos are dismayed by how the Marcos administration has tamed the rising cost of basic goods and services, according to a new survey conducted by Pulse Asia Research in June, a month ahead of the president’s third State of the Nation Address.

At least 76% of Filipinos said they disapprove of the government’s response to inflation, according to the Pulse Asia poll released on Friday.

This marks a five-percentage point increase from the same survey in March and a whopping 39-percentage point increase from June 2023.

Public approval for the government’s inflation response also remained unchanged from March at 5%, the survey found.

More Filipinos also gave the government a thumbs-down for its capacity to create more jobs.

The disapproval rating for the issue rose by eight percentage points to 30% in June, while those who expressed approval for the government’s creation of more jobs dipped by five percentage points to 32%.

The survey was conducted from June 17 to 24, 2024, around a week after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. praised his economic team for doing a “good job” in managing the country’s economy and bringing in a “very large improvement” compared to a year ago.

Pulse Asia also found that 72% of Filipinos consider tempering inflation as the most pressing national concern, followed by increasing workers’ pay (44%), reducing poverty (32%), generating more jobs (30%) and fighting corruption in government (22%).

Managing inflation has remained Filipinos’ most urgent concern in similar Pulse Asia polls since June 2023, when 63% of Filipinos marked it as the most concerning issue out of 17 others.

The survey was conducted using face-to-face interviews with 2,400 adults aged 18 and above. The margin of error is ±2 percent nationwide at a 95 percent confidence level.

In June, headline inflation cooled to its lowest level after four consecutive months of acceleration due to the slower uptick in housing, water, and electricity costs, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

The consumer price index rose to 3.7% in June, easing from the 3.9% print in May and 5.4% recorded in June 2023.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, slightly inched up to 5.1% in May, representing 2.11 million jobless Filipinos, according to the PSA’s preliminary results of its labor force survey released last week.