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University survey reveals consumer confidence still low

Without any long-term economic stimulus policies on the horizon, the confidence of consumers continues to hover at low levels this month, flashing a warning sign to the government, according to the latest monthly survey released by National Central University yesterday.

The consumer confidence index (CCI) edged up by 1.1 percentage points to 69.03 this month as five of the six sub-indices showed slight increases from last month, the report said.

The CCI last month fell to its lowest point in 50 months at 67.93, compounded by continued economic and political uncertainty.

The index gauges the public's expectations on stock performance, household finances, durable goods, job opportunities, consumer price fluctuations and the economic outlook for the next six months.

Consumer expectations for buying durable goods, including houses, cars and household appliances, over the near term were the only sub-index to drop, by 0.2 percentage points to 114.75.

But as this minor fluctuation was within the survey's margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points, the result could be interpreted as unchanged, said Chu Yun-peng (朱雲鵬), head of National Central University's Research Center for Taiwan Economic Development.

The survey interviewed 2,642 people on March 22 and 23.

Public concern over inflation eased slightly as 85.8 percent of the respondents said they believed commodity prices would continue to rise over the next six months, down from 87.7 percent who said so last month.

This caused the sub-index for consumer price fluctuations to record the biggest increase this month of 2.85 percentage points to 44.7.

Day Jaw-yang (戴肇洋), deputy director of Research Division III at the Taiwan Research Institute (台綜院), said the worsening consumer loan problem constituted part of the reason behind the wave of weak sentiment.

After the nation's jobless rate fell to its lowest level in five years at 3.8 percent in January, it climbed up to 3.92 percent last month.

However, middle-aged and elderly unemployed people are not so jubilant about the news, Day said. He said the retail sector, the only hope of employment for these job-seekers, has sagged recently because of spiraling defaults on credit and cash-advance cards and has no plans to increase staffing demand. “The Cabinet has yet to unveil any concrete economic stimulus packages since Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) took over as premier in January. The government should really look into why people's confidence is so weak and hammer out remedies to address the problems,” Day said.
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