The majority of Filipinos continue to view controlling inflation as the country’s most urgent concern that the national administration must address immediately, based on the findings of a Pulse Asia survey released on Tuesday, July 11.

According to the results of the June 19-23 survey, the only national concern considered urgent by 63 percent of Filipinos is the need to control inflation.

Pulse Asia said the public opinion about urgent national concerns is “virtually unchanged” from March 2023 to June 2023.

Second on the list of most urgent concerns is increasing workers’ pay (44 percent) while creating more jobs as well as reducing poverty are considered urgent by almost a third of Filipino adults (31 percent and 30 percent, respectively).

Meanwhile, 25 percent identified the need to fight graft and corruption in the government as an urgent national concern.

“Practically the same percentages of adults cite five issues that make up a fifth set of urgent national concerns—enforcing the rule of law (16 percent), addressing the problem of involuntary hunger (16 percent), providing assistances to farmers (15 percent), fighting criminality (13 percent), and promoting peace (11 percent),” Pulse Asia said.

It noted that Filipinos are least concerned about the government helping small businesses and entrepreneurs (10 percent), reducing the amount of taxes paid by citizens (7 percent), stopping environmental degradation (7 percent), defending national territorial integrity (6 percent), and dealing with terroristic threats and protecting the welfare of overseas Filipino workers (both at 4 percent).

“From March 2023 to June 2023, the only notable movement in these figures is the seven-percentage point increase in the level of concern about enforcing the rule of law,” Pulse Asia pointed out.

Inflation also tops 1st- and 2nd-ranked urgent concern

Pulse Asia noted that controlling inflation is the top first- and second-ranked urgent national concern in June 2023 (32 percent and 20 percent).

In terms of third-ranked national concerns, the leading issues were increasing workers’ pay (13 percent), creating more jobs (13 percent), controlling inflation (11 percent), fighting corruption (10 percent), reducing poverty (8 percent), and addressing the problem of involuntary hunger (8 percent).

“Majority levels of concern regarding the need to control inflation are recorded in all geographic areas and socio-economic classes (56 percent to 71 percent and 62 percent to 67 percent, respectively). The only other majority urgent national concern in these same subgroupings is increasing workers’ pay (51 percent in Metro Manila),” Pulse Asia said.

Meanwhile, the least often mentioned urgent national concerns across areas and classes were defending national territorial integrity (2 percent to 8 percent and 2 percent to 7 percent, respectively), addressing terroristic threats (both at 2 percent to 5 percent ), and protecting the welfare of overseas Filipino workers (3 percent to 6 percent and almost nil to 5 percent, respectively).

Pulse Asia’s “Ulat ng Bayan” survey was conducted from June 19 to 23, 2023, using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adult respondents nationwide.

It has a +/-2.8 percent margin of error for national estimates.

Subnational estimates for the geographic areas covered in the survey have +/-5.7 percent margin of error for Metro Manila, the rest of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

Source:
courtesy of MANILA BULLETIN

by ELLALYN DE VERA-RUIZ

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