Consumer confidence still high in Philippines

Despite this, the latest results of the Consumer Confidence Index showed that spending remained “restrained” and that saving was the top priority for those surveyed.

Just like in the previous quarter, the Philippines was ranked third, behind Indonesia and India, in consumer confidence levels, with a score of 118, up from 112 in the same quarter last year.

“This paints a positive picture for the third quarter of 2012,” Nielsen Philippines managing director Stuart Jamieson said in a statement. “The high confidence can be attributed to the positive perception regarding local job prospects in the country for the next 12 months, which at this point is the second-highest worldwide.”

He added that, “Expansion plans in the energy, transportation, telecom industries and largely the BPOs [business process outsourcing], are helping to create this positive perception in the country.”

The Nielsen global survey of consumer confidence and spending intentions, established in 2005, measures consumer confidence, major concerns and spending intentions among more than 29,000 Internet consumers in 58 countries. Consumer confidence levels above and below a baseline of 100 indicate degrees of optimism and pessimism.

The study also showed that Filipino online consumers felt positively about the state of their personal finances, ranking second among the most optimistic about their personal finances in the world.

For the third quarter of 2012, perceptions of Filipinos on whether it was a good or a bad time to buy things that they wanted and needed over the next 12 months showed a slight improvement in confidence with 7 per cent saying that it was an excellent time to do so as compared to 5 per cent a year ago. Thirty-nine per cent of the respondents said that it was a good time to buy compared to 42 per cent in the third quarter of 2011.

When there was spare cash available in the household, 67 per cent of Filipino respondents said they would rather put this into savings, while 34 per cent would buy new technology products. 

“The Philippines is among the top 10 countries which prioritise savings when there is spare cash in the household,” Jamieson said.