Consumer confidence tumbled this month and inflation expectations surged, according to the latest ANZ-Roy Morgan NZ Consumer Confidence Survey.
The survey shows consumer confidence down to 91.3 in March from 100.1 in February.
Two-year ahead inflation expectations jumped one percentage point to 5.7%.
And the proportion of households thinking it’s a good time to buy a major household item dropped 10 points to -14, where it was in October.
"The conflict in the Middle East has created significant uncertainty for the economic outlook and is hitting people in the back pocket already. Confidence impacts are likely to exacerbate the impact on growth, but it is entirely reasonable that both firms and households think twice when making spending decisions in case things take a marked turn for the worse. The sharp rise in inflation expectations is also unsurprising. This is a challenging time for many," the survey says.
The full report is here.
2 Comments
B Deck stewards' survey, re will you be playing deck-quoits tomorrow?
Meanwhile down on the farm - how will NZ feed itself?
I don't think the economy was looking too flash before this happened, the green shoots weren't really materialising.
At what stage do the blue voters blame the current government and not the previous one?
National thought they could grow the economy by slashing spending and giving unaffordable tax cuts. Really what they should have done is addressed some of our infrastructure deficit and reduced our reliance on foreign fuel. That investment would have increased GDP instead of decreasing it and decreased unemployment / handouts instead of increasing it. And because debt is a ratio to GDP, its probable our debt level would be very similar to now.
Not that Chippy would have been much better, all he could go on about was the cost of living. Again best way to fix that was to increase wages, the RBNZ already had inflation tracking down before the election.
There seems to be no party that wants to invest in NZ, that seems ridiculous. Surely an "Investment" or "Infrastructure" party would be an instant win, probably hold the balance of power. I'd certainly vote for them (PDK not so much).
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