18pc Pakistanis believe country is on right track: survey

Marking the highest optimism in last two years, 18pc Pakistanis believe that the country is heading in the right direction. It said males were twofold more optimistic than females. However, economic problems continued to top the list of worrying issues for Pakistanis. These were the crux of the “Consumer confidence index survey” conducted by a market research company, Ipsos, for the second quarter of the year 2024. The study, in which over 1,000 people were interviewed, was held in all four provinces, Islamabad, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The data collection was done May 20 to May 29. The findings showed that optimism had significantly increased from 12 per cent to 18pc in the second quarter marking it the highest in the last two years. Economic problems continued to top the list of worrying issues for Pakistanis. However, a significant decrease was seen in the perception of inflation as the most worrying issue since the first quarter of the current year. After increase in inflation, unemployment, increasing poverty, electricity loadshedding and prices of electricity were major issues of concerns for them.