The nation’s consumer confidence reached its highest level in 10 years, with the public showing the strongest sentiments toward stock investments, the economic outlook and job opportunities, the latest National Central University survey showed yesterday.
The consumer confidence index (CCI) gained 3.62 points this month to move to 86.78, the university’s Research Center for Taiwan Economic Development said in a report. This month’s figure, which rose for the eighth consecutive month since June, represented the highest mark since 2001, the center’s tallies showed.
“This month’s record-high -confidence level showed that people are remaining optimistic as the economy continues to rebound from the global financial crisis,” center director Hsu Chih-chiang (徐之強) said by telephone.
“We don’t know whether the confidence index has peaked, but looking ahead, the central bank’s interest rate and exchange rate policies, as well as the nation’s consumer price fluctuations, will be key to public sentiments through the rest of the year,” he said.
The CCI benchmark gauges public expectations concerning stock performances, household finances, durable goods, job opportunities, consumer prices and the economic outlook for the next six months. This month’s survey — which polled 2,382 people over the age of 20 nationwide between last Wednesday and Saturday — showed improvements in all sub-indexes.
Buoyed by the booming local stock market, with the benchmark TAIEX reaching 9,086.02 points on Jan. 18, the highest since May 2008, the sub-index for the stock investment outlook for the next six months rose 2.5 points to 102.4 points — the only sub-index that has exceeded 100 points this month.
A CCI figure of less than 100 points indicates that the public is pessimistic about the outlook for the next six months, while a score of between 100 and 200 points signals optimism.
“The score of the stock outlook sub-index shows investors had relatively optimistic sentiments on this front compared with the other sub-indexes. In contrast, people’s sentiments about consumer price fluctuations were less optimistic than the other sub-indexes over the near term,” Hsu said.
The sub-index for consumer prices climbed 5.5 points this month to 52.55, lagging far behind scores of 81.45 for household finances (up 3.75 points from last month), 89.85 for economic outlook (up 3.85), 93.10 for durable goods (up 2.4) and 95.85 points for job opportunities (up 3.75), according to the center’s report.
The latest confidence survey underlined the growing upbeat sentiments among the public, with the government reporting on Monday that the unemployment rate last month fell to a two-year low of 4.67 percent, while industrial production last year grew by a record 26.38 percent from a year earlier.
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