Why is my list empty in my jsf managed bean

Question

I have already determined the list is empty as suggested by this link as below.

   <h:outputText value="#{not empty purchasesBean.purchasesList}" />

and showed false,which means the list is empty. I am unable to fix my java code to fill the list, the method is shown below. NOTE:There is code that is commented out just to show different 'data sets' i have tried but did not work.

  import java.io.Serializable;
  import java.math.BigDecimal;
  import java.util.ArrayList;
  import java.util.List;
  import javax.annotation.ManagedBean;
  import javax.annotation.PostConstruct;
  import javax.faces.bean.SessionScoped;

  import javax.faces.bean.ViewScoped;
@ManagedBean
@SessionScoped
//@ViewScoped
public class PurchasesBean  implements Serializable{
   List<Purchases> purchasesList; // = new ArrayList();
   Purchases purchases;


    @PostConstruct
    public void init(){
    
        this.purchasesList = new ArrayList<Purchases>();
    
   //====================== first data set ==============================        
    
        Purchases p1 = new Purchases("Hoop Iron","",new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100));
        Purchases p2 = new Purchases("Hacksaw Blades","",new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100));
        Purchases p3 = new Purchases("Hacksaw Blades","",new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100));
        Purchases p4 = new Purchases("Hacksaw Blades","",new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100));
        Purchases p5 = new Purchases("Hacksaw Blades","",new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100));
        Purchases p6 = new Purchases("Hacksaw Blades","",new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100));
    
       this.purchasesList.add(p1);
       this.purchasesList.add(p2);
       this.purchasesList.add(p3);
       purchasesList.add(p4);
       purchasesList.add(p5);
       purchasesList.add(p6);
    
    
         //======================  second data set  ==========================        
    
 //        
 //        purchasesList.add(new Purchases("Hoop Iron","",new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100)));
 //        purchasesList.add(new Purchases("Hacksaw Blades","",new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100)));
    
         //=====================  third data set    =========================
    
 //        purchasesList.add(purchases = new Purchases("Hoop Iron","",new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100)));
 //        purchasesList.add(purchases = new Purchases("Hacksaw Blades","",new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100),new BigDecimal(100)));
    

    }

    public List<Purchases> getPurchasesList() {
         System.out.println("purchases list created........");
       return purchasesList;
    }

    public void setPurchasesList(List<Purchases> purchasesList) {
        this.purchasesList = purchasesList;
    }

    public Purchases getPurchases() {
        return purchases;
    }

    public void setPurchases(Purchases purchases) {
        this.purchases = purchases;
    }
    
 }








    import java.math.BigDecimal;

public class Purchases {

    String itemName;
    String itemDescrip;
    BigDecimal itemPrice;
    BigDecimal itemQty;
    BigDecimal total;

    public Purchases(String itemName,String itemDescrip,BigDecimal itemPrice,BigDecimal itemQty,BigDecimal total){

        this.itemName = itemName;
        this.itemDescrip = itemDescrip;
        this.itemPrice = itemPrice;
        this.itemQty = itemQty;
        this.total = total;
    }

    public String getItemName() {
        return itemName;
    }

    public void setItemName(String itemName) {
        this.itemName = itemName;
    }

    public String getItemDescrip() {
        return itemDescrip;
    }

    public void setItemDescrip(String itemDescrip) {
        this.itemDescrip = itemDescrip;
    }

    public BigDecimal getItemPrice() {
        return itemPrice;
    }

    public void setItemPrice(BigDecimal itemPrice) {
        this.itemPrice = itemPrice;
    }

    public BigDecimal getItemQty() {
        return itemQty;
    }

    public void setItemQty(BigDecimal itemQty) {
        this.itemQty = itemQty;
    }

    public BigDecimal getTotal() {
       return total;
    }

    public void setTotal(BigDecimal total) {
        this.total = total;
    }  
  }

Those two above are my java classes, below is my JSF (xhtml) code Fogive the unused facelets library,it was initially a primefaces data table which i changed into a JSFcore data table to just see where the problem might be but still the data put into the List is not showing at all.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:h="http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/html"   
      xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
      xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
      xmlns:p="http://primefaces.org/ui">
     >
    
    <h:head>
        <title>Facelet Title</title>
    </h:head>
    <h:body>
        Hello from Facelets
        <br />
        <h:link outcome="welcomePrimefaces" value="Primefaces welcome page" />
          <h:form>
              <h:outputText value="#{not empty purchasesBean.purchasesList}" />
        
        </h:form>
    </h:body>
</html>

Why is the list empty even after adding objects to it? Your help is appreciated.