{"id":191110,"date":"2025-12-19T03:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T03:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/191110\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T03:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T03:50:10","slug":"consumer-confidence-lifts-to-four-year-high-anz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/191110\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumer confidence lifts to four-year high \u2013 ANZ"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThat may well have been a contributing factor to the improvement in confidence, along with generally improving headlines about the state of the economy and the outlook for the year ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inflation expectations eased from 5.2% to 4.6% in December, but the figure remains much higher than Consumers Price Index inflation (3%).<\/p>\n

Zollner said in recent years there has been a strong negative correlation between inflation expectations and consumer confidence.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the proportion of households thinking it\u2019s a good time to buy a major household item (seen as the best retail indicator) rose 8 points to -1.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis indicator hasn\u2019t been positive in more than four years but is knocking on the door,\u201d Zollner said.<\/p>\n

A net 22% of respondents said they expect to be better off this time next year, up 1 point to the highest level since April.<\/p>\n

But the proportion of people who currently feel better off than last year is still very soft, rising 1 point to -18%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proportion of people who feel better off than a year ago hasn\u2019t budged yet. That\u2019ll come, but the labour market does typically lag the activity cycle by around six months,\u201d Zollner said.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, the Westpac McDermott Miller Consumer Confidence Index rose to its highest level for the year<\/a>, up 5.6 points to 96.5 for the December quarter.<\/p>\n

This still remains in pessimistic territory and around the levels seen last December.<\/p>\n

The proportion of people who said they expect economic conditions would improve over the coming year reached its highest level since 2021, rising 6.6 points 103.4.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we often see a lift in households\u2019 spirits at this time of year, there is reason to expect some of that Christmas cheer will continue into 2026,\u201d Westpac senior economist Satish Ranchhod said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re starting to see some more encouraging signs in the economy, and hopefully 2026 will be a more positive year for most New Zealand households.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cameron Smith is an Auckland-based business reporter. He joined the Herald in 2015 and has covered business and sports. He reports on topics such as retail, small business, the workplace and macroeconomics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThat may well have been a contributing factor to the improvement in confidence, along with generally improving headlines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3225,12465,38952,138,2950,3311,219,3011,11785,2959,4729,700,25449,25619,130,11212,111,139,69,81689,8822,131,61,1530],"class_list":["post-191110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-according","tag-anz","tag-anzroy","tag-business","tag-confidence","tag-consumer","tag-economy","tag-four","tag-fouryear","tag-high","tag-highest","tag-latest","tag-level","tag-lifts","tag-more","tag-morgan","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-risen","tag-survey","tag-than","tag-to","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}