Another warning has been raised. A former economic official has pointed out that the confidence crisis, fueled by the public outrage over corruption, could undermine the sustainability of growth.

The nation appears to be returning to the period when hope was at its lowest. Based on data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the economy, while remaining strong on the surface, is hollowing out.

“Unless and until we Filipinos somehow manage to regain trust in our government and in one another, it would appear impossible to fulfill our dreams to uplift our nation’s economic and sociocultural well-being,” former National Economic and Development Authority director general Cielito Habito said.

Philippine Stock Exchange president Ramon Monzon cited a confidence crisis creeping into society as irregularities involving the highest officials in government are exposed.

The withdrawal of trust is being replaced by anger and frustration that is pervading the business sector.

“Our confidence in the running of the government has been shaken. Now, for the government to rebuild that kind of trust is very important,” said Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman George Barcelon.

Apparently, confidence in business remains low, as reflected in PSA data, which indicate that as of August, the economy lost 537,000 small businesses since the start of the year.

“It should alarm us that we are losing small businesses by the hundreds of thousands in such a short span of time,” Habito said.

Small businesses are the backbone of the economy as they employ 67 percent of Filipino workers and account for 99.8 percent of domestic enterprises.

Based on the PSA numbers, there are 219,000 fewer micro, small, and medium enterprises compared to January 2020, shortly before the pandemic.

Habito said the trend of small businesses suffering declines rather than growth, even as the overall economy has been growing, is extremely worrying.

Skilled Filipinos are not landing jobs as the largest segment of the 49.8 percent unemployed as of August are college-educated, making up 39 percent.

These numbers were only 37 and 27 percent, respectively, before the pandemic, when high school-educated workers dominated the jobless numbers.

Filipino managers are also facing unemployment as more MSMEs close and these are replaced by the so-called gig workers such as delivery and passenger transport riders and other informal jobs.

This is consistent with data showing transport services to be among the top growing service subsectors of the economy.

On the surface, the economic indicators “look deceptively good,” according to the economist.

Inflation has slowed, but food prices keep rising, which penalizes the poor, he said.

Another growth driver is government consumption spending, which grew 13.1 percent this year, but the economic team admitted that this too may shrink as a result of the investigations into flood control and other infrastructure projects.

Government figures also indicate that fixed capital formation, or long-term investments, has been growing more slowly since its 9.9-percent post-pandemic rebound in 2021. Since 2020, it has progressively slowed to 9.7, 8.2, 6.2 and lately 4.3 percent annual growth.

A business sage said that confidence is largely a matter of perception, and the continuous stream of corruption revelations, without anyone being penalized so far, has done nothing to improve it.

Moves aimed at covering up the truth will ultimately destroy all hope of progress.