I mentioned earlier that medium- to long-term inflation expectations are more or less unchanged, but results of the Opinion Survey on the General Public's Views and Behavior released by the Bank show that the proportion of respondents who answered that prices would go up one year from now has been on an increasing trend -- indicating a change in people's perception of prices (Chart 9).
Seven years ago – in December 2006, the total microfinance loan portfolio of banks was 4 billion pesos for 650,000 borrowers or an average of 6,150 pesos per borrower. In other words, bank loans to microenterprises increased by 102% in seven years, while the number of microentrepreneurs who accessed micro loans from banks increased by 56%.