Page Seven / La Paz
People still see that there is a crisis in the country, but their perspective of the economy and the situation of their family for the next year improves, as reflected in the latest Interactive Culture Survey carried out in March for Page Seven.
The sample size was 800 respondents and was made to a population over 18 years of age residing in private homes with Internet access from home PC or smartphone. The confidence level of the survey is 95%.
“How do you consider the economic situation that the country is going through?” was one of the questions asked. 49.4% responded that there is a moderate economic crisis and 37% say that the economic crisis is strong, 6, 6% believe that there is no crisis, 2.7% that there is a moderate economic boom.
In general, 86.4% think that the situation is still in crisis.
How will the country’s economic situation be in 2023? 24.8% consider it better, 28.8% the same, 16.9% equally bad, 10.8% worse and 7.4% equally good. In general, 32.2% believe that it will be better and just as well, and 27.7% think that it will be just as bad or worse. In other words, optimism prevails. In September 2021, only 27.3% maintained that the outlook for 2023 will be better.
How is your family’s financial situation right now? 33.4% answered that it is bad or very bad and 15.7% indicated that it is very good or good.
How will your family’s economic situation be next year? 40.8% responded that it was neither good nor bad, and 23.6% that it was good, 10.9% bad, and 6.3% very good. In general, 29.9% maintain that the family economy will be very good to good and only 12.5% think that it will be bad to very bad.
Financial analyst Jaime Dunn believes that the survey reflects what is happening at the microeconomic level. Many people lost their jobs and look for work alternatives even with salaries below the national minimum and there is greater informality and underemployment.
Going forward, the population has more hope because there is a perception that the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are diminishing. People in their analysis have not even taken into account the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “The crisis in people’s mentality is more associated with the pandemic. The measurement is still biased to the perspective that people have comparing the year of the pandemic with the year without the pandemic, ”he pointed out.
In any case, the analyst maintains that expectations are very important in economics because if people think that everything will go wrong, they don’t invest.
He adds that the survey also reflects the perception that only at the end of 2023 will an improvement be observed and it will return to the levels of 2019.
The economist Germán Molina affirms that the growth figures for the first quarter are not yet available, but the external context this year is unfavorable. Due to the pandemic, China has declared a quarantine again, in addition to the effects of the invasion of Ukraine and the rise in interest rates in the US. All this will have an impact on access to external financing.
He added that the prices of corn and wheat have begun to rise and there is more contraband.
For Molina, the crisis is still present in the country and people seek to generate income on the street, shops are crowded and there are no sales.
