Q4 business confidence decline not Rody’s fault – Palace

MANILA, Philippines - The decline in business confidence in the fourth quarter of this year should not be attributed to President Duterte and his policies, a Palace official said yesterday.

“As we are fully aware, global uncertainties are growing due to recent events such as the Brexit, Trump’s election as next US president and slower-than-anticipated global recovery. These resulted in risk aversion as investors prefer to adopt a ‘wait-and-see’ mode,” Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said in a statement.

“We remain confident that domestic economic fundamentals are strong and further reforms in the fiscal sector can help our country become more resilient in the years ahead,” he said.

Last week, a business expectations survey of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas showed that the overall confidence index (CI) for the fourth quarter dropped to 39.8 percent, the lowest in over two years.

This is allegedly a result of uncertainty over the government’s foreign policy and also partly because of a weaker peso.

Although the CI remained in positive territory with optimists outnumbering pessimists, the figure was the lowest fourth quarter outlook since the 2011 record of 38.7 percent.