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As the Covid-19 pandemic wanes, consumer confidence is seen improving, albeit below the pre-pandemic levels. These are the key findings of the Reserve Bank of India’s latest consumer confidence survey.
“Household spending was buoyant on the back of higher essential and non-essential spending,” the survey noted. While 75 per cent of the respondents noted an increase in their spending in March 2023, the proportion was just 64.1 per cent in March 2022. People seem to be spending more on essential items now — around 85.3 per cent of the people said their spending on essential items has increased in the March 2023 survey. This is the highest since November 2019. The proportion of this group of people was 76.6 per cent a year back, in March 2022.
Even when it comes to non-essentials, the proportion of people who saw an increase in their spending has risen from 16.1 per cent in March 2022 to 25.2 per cent in March 2023. Also, 34.5 per cent of the respondents said their spending on non-essentials will increase a year later.
However, just 31.4 per cent of people said their economic situation has improved in March 2023 — an improvement from 21.7 per cent a year back. “Consumer confidence continues to recover from the historic low recorded in mid-2021, though it remained in the pessimistic zone,” the survey noted.
Job situation
A third of the total respondents think that the employment scenario has become better — an improvement from 23.6 per cent in March 2022. It’s not just that, more people expect things to get better by next year. “With an uptick in current perception, the sentiments on employment are nearing the levels seen around mid-2019; consumers are also optimistic about the employment outlook as more than half of the respondents expect the employment scenario to improve over the next year,” noted the RBI survey.
Income levels also have improved for close to a quarter of the respondents and 54.1 per cent of them are confident that it will increase in the next year. This, too, is the highest since the beginning of the pandemic. In March 2021, just 9.8 per cent of the people had noted an income increase.
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