Not just India Inc, consumers also losing confidence

Consumer confidence on the Indian economy has seen a significant decline in the June- September quarter, shows a consumer confidence survey carried out by Reserve Bank of India. The RBI says the positive perception about Indian economy has gone down from 61.2 percent in the last quarter to 56.9 percent in September 2011. The good news is higher percentage of people feel employment conditions could improve next year.

Positive opinion about future has also come down from 62.8 percent to 59.5 percent. The confidence about economic conditions has improved in households when compared to last year but deteriorated when compared to the June quarter.

[caption id=“attachment_154436” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The RBI says the positive perception about Indian economy has gone down. Reuters”]  [/caption]

Almost half of the households said they were better off due to better salaries and improved business income. But pessimism was also rampant as price levels have gone up over this time period.

More from Business

Hyundai India’s Rs 27,870 crore IPO oversubscribed by 2.28X, largely driven by institutional investors How Indian fintech startups are driving Malaysia’s UPI-like digital payments revolution

Regarding future income, optimism is still high but the level of optimism has gone down consistently over the past four quarters. But 85 percent people still feel prices could continue to go up over the next year. Consumer confidence was also dampened by high interest rates as almost three fourth of consumers felt the rates were too high from borrowers’ point of view.

Another interesting point is the RBI notes that more people have gone into a “Neutral” zone while responding to the questions as they were not sure about how things will pan out over the next year.

Impact Shorts

More Shorts

Tata Harrier EV vs Mahindra XEV 9e: Design and road presence compared

As Trump weaponises tariff, Fed sees a bigger worry: Not jobs, but rising prices in America

The RBI conducts the survey of six metropolitan cities: Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi. Each city is divided into three major areas and each major area is further divided into three sub-areas. From each sub-area, about 100 respondents are selected randomly. For each round of survey 5,400 respondents are selected (900 respondents from each city). The respondents are well-spread across the cities to provide good geographical coverage.