Filipinos have exhibited slightly stronger confidence in spending their hard-earned money in the second half of 2008 amid the severest global financial crisis in 80 years, a recent survey has found.

According to the latest edition of the Nielsen consumer confidence survey, this seeming disconnect between local and global sentiment may be due to several factors, which include prices that appear to have leveled off after several months of rapid increases.

Nielsen Company Philippines managing director Benedicto Cid Jr. at a news briefing also described the country?s consumer confidence level as ?stable,? compared with the first half of the year.

The survey?conducted online from Sept. 22 to Oct. 6, 2008 with 26,202 respondents worldwide?showed that the country?s consumer confidence level rose three points to 102 from the level recorded in the first six months of the year. This put the Philippines at 9th place among the 52 countries surveyed.

In the previous edition, the Philippines ranked 8th out of 52 countries. The global average is 84, and South Korea had the lowest rating with 36.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Filipino consumers ranked 7th in a field of 14 nations, one of only four countries that exhibited an increase in confidence level.

Cid said that the strong consumer confidence was likely because of falling fuel and rice prices?two of the most volatile components of inflation?as well as the sustained volume of dollar remittances from expatriate Filipino workers.

At the same time, consumer confidence was also being fueled by the strong dollar, which translates to more pesos for local beneficiaries of overseas Filipinos.

The survey also revealed that Filipinos? spare cash is increasingly going into spending for vacations, new clothes, paying off debt, home improvement and retirement savings.

Surveyed Filipinos said that over the next six months their main concerns would be job security, achieving optimal ?work-life balance,? as well as the state of the economy.

?Their secondary concerns include their children?s education and welfare, the welfare and happiness of their parents and rising utility bills,? Cid said.

The generally positive local outlook also masks the fact that two-thirds of Filipinos now believe the country is experiencing a recession, which is officially defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

Of this number, 47 percent believe that the country will not be able to rise out of recession over the next 12 months, 36 percent were unsure, and only 17 percent felt that the Philippine economy would be able to recover within that period.

?People see a lot of signs of economic distress,? Cid said. ?They worry about that. For them, a recession means bad economic news, but personally, they are not feeling it yet.?

Philippine Daily Inquirer with a report from Agence France-Presse