The ANZ-Roy Morgan Research (RMR) consumer confidence index has been released for the week ended 27 April, which registered a big fall, tanking 5.1 points (-4.0%) to be below its long-term average (113.0) and well below the highs reached after last year’s Federal Election:
Negative news flow around upcoming Federal Budget cuts appear to have influenced the result, with this week’s weakness driven by a sharp fall in consumers’ perceptions of ‘economic conditions next year’ (-11.4%) and ‘economic conditions in next five years’ (-4.6%). However, the sub-indices of confidence (particularly perceptions of ‘financial situations compared to a year ago’) that are most correlated with households’ spending decisions declined relatively more modestly (-3.7%).
Below tracks the ANZ-RM index against the monthly Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment index, whose latest reading was broadly flat:
It will be interesting to see whether the upcoming Westpac index follows Roy Morgan’s lower.
