3Q RP business sentiment rises to new 2-year high

Favorable macroeconomic fundamentals and the new administration drove business sentiment to a new two-year high, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said Thursday. The latest quarterly Business Expectation Survey the BSP conducted between July 1 and August 10 showed that the business confidence index reached 45 percent in the current quarter. The index grew from 43.9 percent in the second quarter and from 18.4 percent in the third quarter of 2009. "Respondents attributed their optimistic outlook to the steady growth of overseas Filipino workers' remittances, smooth transition of power, and favorable expectations on the new government that could boost investor confidence in the economy, better performance of exports, and sustained investment inflows," the BSP said. The central bank said the optimism is across all business sectors covered by the survey including industry, construction, wholesale and retail trade, and services. The index is a measure of the level of confidence of businesses in terms of their ability to generate profits and their sentiment on the economy in general. It is computed as the difference between the percentage of respondents that said they were optimistic and the percentage of those who said they were pessimistic. The latest survey had 1,632 firms as respondents selected from the Top 7,000 corporations of the Securities and Exchange Commission. JE/VS, GMANews.TV