New Zealand businesses remained upbeat in September, although activity indicators weakened among those firms responding later in the month, as fuel prices rose sharply.<\/p>\n
ANZ’s latest Business Outlook survey showed headline confidence easing 2 points to 51.9 percent in September.<\/p>\n
That means optimists still comfortably outnumbered pessimists, despite near constant economic and geopolitical uncertainty.<\/p>\n
Firms’ expectations for their own activity – usually seen as a better guide to where the economy is heading – were virtually unchanged at 47.9 percent.<\/p>\n
But reported activity, compared with a year ago, fell to 10.8 from 16.4 in August.<\/p>\n
The averages also masked a clear split between early and late responses.<\/p>\n
Most businesses replied around the start of September, while about a quarter responded after ANZ sent a reminder three weeks later.<\/p>\n
In between, the Dubai spot oil price jumped from about US$100 a barrel to a peak of US$128, before easing to US$111 by 22 September.<\/p>\n
Own-activity expectations stood at 52 among early respondents but fell to 36 among those replying later in the month.<\/p>\n
The split was even sharper in firms’ recent experience, where retail activity went from a net 17 early in the month, to -13 later.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the economy-wide employment reading compared with a year ago swung from positive 5 to negative 23.<\/p>\n
ANZ said the survey suggested “a renewed confidence impact” from higher oil prices, although late-month activity readings remained well above the lows seen in March and April.<\/p>\n
Investment plans held up, while residential construction intentions improved through the month.<\/p>\n
The results varied widely by sector as once again, manufacturers were among the most upbeat, with confidence at 78.7 and own-activity expectations at 69.6.<\/p>\n
Construction also strengthened, but retail investment intentions were just 2.2 and employment intentions were negative 10.9.<\/p>\n
One factor likely to please the Reserve Bank was the oil-price rises seemingly having little effect on firms’ inflation expectations, which were almost unchanged at 3.25 percent versus 3.26 percent in August.<\/p>\n
The net share of those firms planning to raise prices actually fell to 48.4 percent from 51.0 percent.<\/p>\n
Cost pressures remain stubbornly high, with a net 81.9 percent expecting increases, while expected wage growth over the next year rose to 2.83 percent.<\/p>\n
ANZ said the wage measure posed a mild upside risk to the Reserve Bank’s forecasts, while spare capacity may be shrinking faster than the central bank expected.<\/p>\n
ANZ described the picture as a “bumpy recovery”, with momentum in manufacturing and parts of construction offset by weaker readings elsewhere.<\/p>\n
It said how firms responded to renewed uncertainty would help determine how the economy finished the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand businesses remained upbeat in September, although activity indicators weakened among those firms responding later in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-616000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616000","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=616000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}