Guarded optimism for 2023
For most Filipinos with regular employment, today would be the first working day of the year.
After coming from a long weekend, which for some started on the day before Christmas, chances are they would spend the early part of the day talking about their activities during the holidays and their thoughts about 2023.
According to a survey conducted by Social Weather Stations (SWS) from Dec. 10 to Dec. 14, 95 percent of the respondents are looking to the new year with hope, while 5 percent are apprehensive about it.
By and large, the same level of optimism, give or take a few points, had been shown in previous surveys by SWS and other survey companies.
Somehow, at the beginning of any new year, majority of Filipinos have an outlook of hopefulness or belief that despite the difficulties they may have gone through the past year, things would be better in the future.
This “hope springs eternal” disposition may be attributed to either the Filipinos’ sense of religiosity (“God will provide so don’t worry”) or the notion that when you’re already in the pits, there is no other way to go but up.
Amid the forecast by some financial analysts that the Philippine economy faces tough times ahead due to, among others, a possible global recession in 2023, Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno had said that the worst was over for the Philippines and that the best was yet to come.
That’s vintage Diokno. As in the past government positions he held, for him, the glass that represents the economy is always half-full, never half-empty.
His statement is reminiscent of Filipino economist Bernardo Villegas who earned the monicker “Prophet of Boom” in the ‘90s for his consistent optimistic or rosy predictions about the economy despite the serious challenges it faced during those times.
Sadly, the booms that Villegas predicted were enjoyed primarily by politically connected or financially entrenched families.
In light of the exorbitant cost of basic commodities these days, which is exemplified by the P750 per kilo cost of onions, it is difficult for ordinary Filipino households to be optimistic about the new year.
The assurance by the government’s economic managers that the inflation rate (which reached a whopping 8 percent last month) is manageable or that the country’s economic factors would eventually result in positive developments hardly inspires confidence in the C, D, and E sectors of our society.
Worse, some government officials had offered solutions about coping with high prices that were either outlandish or indicative of their ignorance of the living conditions of 99 percent of Filipinos.
As if things are not bad enough, the possibility of a variant of COVID-19 that is now raging in China getting to our shores looms with the forthcoming Chinese Lunar New Year when many Chinese tourists are expected to flock to our tourist spots.
Recall that in January 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak was reported in Wuhan, China, the past administration refused to implement infection prevention measures on visiting Chinese tourists for fear of “hurting the feelings” of Chinese strongman Xi Jinping whom then President Rodrigo Duterte idolized.
Shortly after the Chinese tourists left, the government announced the presence of the virus in the country which was traced to some of those tourists.
As a consequence of that misguided hospitality and subservience to China, the Philippines was subjected to strict quarantine regulations for two years that crippled the economy, forced the shutdown of thousands of businesses, displaced millions of Filipino workers, and resulted in billions of pesos in national debt to keep the pandemic at bay.
With the present administration apparently disposed to maintaining the past administration’s accommodating policy toward China, there is a possibility that history may repeat itself with the latest COVID-19 variant.
Given these circumstances and the other factors earlier mentioned, guarded optimism about the new year is justified. INQ
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