‘Firms to hire fewer workers in Q3’
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2019 16:27:57 +0000
BUSINESSES in the Philippines plan to hire fewer employees despite their stronger expansion plans for the third quarter of 2019, a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) survey found.
Results of the recently released Business Expectation Survey (BES) put the confidence index (CI) of companies with expansion plans at 33.5 percent, up from 33.2 percent in the previous quarter.
The CI is calculated as the net of percentage of companies that replied in the affirmative and the percentage of firms that answered otherwise on their views about a given indicator.
“Stronger expansion plans were recorded across subsectors, except for manufacturing, whose expansion plans were unchanged from a quarter ago,” the central bank said.
Despite this, survey results also showed the employment outlook index fell to 26 percent from 29.7 percent.
“This suggests that more firms will continue to hire new employees, although the number of new hires may be lower, compared to [those found in the] previous quarter’s survey,” the BSP said.
“[E]mployment prospects were generally expected to moderate across sectors, except for the services sector which remained steady,” it added.
The employment outlook is consistent with the less-optimistic overall business sentiment for July to September.
Firms were less upbeat for the next three months, with the index sliding to 47.6 percent from 52 percent three months earlier.
“Business optimism was dampened [by] expectations of interruption of business activities during the rainy season and stiffer competition,”
BSP Department of Economic Statistics Director Redentor Paolo Alegre Jr. has said.
The latest BES, which polled 1,501 companies nationwide, was conducted from April 1 to May 28. Its results are considered indicative of the direction of overall business activity.
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