BSP survey: More firms to expand operations by Q2

With the rosy economic picture of the Philippines, more firms want to expand their business operations and hire more workers this year, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said over the weekend. BSP Department of Economic Statistics director Rosabel Guerrero said that about one-third of the respondents of the quarterly Business Expectations Survey (BES) — done from Jan. 6 to Feb. 14 covering 1,630 firms across the country — indicated plans to expand their operations starting the second quarter of 2011. "Consistent with the more positive outlook of the industry sector about their own operations, more firms or 33.9 percent of the respondents indicated expansion plans for the second quarter this year," Guerrero said. In the previous year, 25.7 percent of the total respondents signified their intention to increase their presence in the Philippines. Mining and quarrying firms signified to bolster their expansion plans at 47.3 percent, followed by agriculture, fishery, and forestry sector (45.3 percent), electricty, gas, and water sector (38.5 percent), and manufacturing sector (32.5 percent). Another indicator supporting expectations of sustained growth for this year was the employment outlook index for the second quarter, which "improved further from the levels in the previous quarter and a year ago," Guerrero said, adding that employment indices for construction, services, and industry sectors went up. Guerrero also said the business constraints identified by the respondents of the survey include competition, weak demand leading to low sales volume, and financial problems. The Philippines posted an economic output of 7.3 percent last year — its strongest growth since 1976. The country's gross domestic product last year exceeded the growth target of 5-6 percent set by the government. Business optimism in the Philippines spiked to its highest level for the second quarter of the year, helped by the Aquino administration's plans for infratructure development, economic growth, and remittances from overseas Filipino workers, the BSP said on Feb. 24. The BES showed that the confidence index reached a record 59.4 percent for the second quarter of the year — the highest reading since the business expectation survey started in the second quarter of 2001.