The Wins of Change:

It has been almost three years since the first reported COVID-19 case in the Philippines. Since then, the country has faced a multitude of challenges as the pandemic strained health services, crippled the economy, and displaced workers. Nevertheless, we eventually made it through as we learned to live with the virus and slowly reopened the economy. Just as we were starting to recover, apprehensions resurfaced early this year with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The 2022 National Elections also casted doubts because of the challenges brought by changes in leadership during a crisis.

Although there are new global and local issues that businesses had to face this year, almost 90% of the CEOs are confident that their company will experience revenue growth in the next 12 months and in the next three years. At the macroeconomic level, however, 52% of the CEOs believe that the Philippine economy still needs over two years to recover from the impact of COVID-19.

Consistent with the results of the 2021 survey, the CEOs identified infrastructure development, domestic consumption and government spending as the major growth drivers of the economy in the next 12 months. To recover from the pandemic, most CEOs say that the government should prioritize agriculture, education and healthcare in the next two years.

The optimism on local recovery, however, does not extend to the global environment. The recent survey shows that 44% of the CEOs believe that global economic growth will decline in the next 12 months. Similar to last year’s results, the CEOs identified the United States and China as the most important countries for their company’s growth. These countries were also the Philippines’ top trading partners in 2021 having exported products worth US$11.8bn and US$11.6bn to the US and China, respectively.