UAE consumers feel the region's economic pressures may be lifting, with the first recorded upward shift in consumer confidence in a year. These are the UAE results from the latest Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) – which has moved up by 15.9 index points as compared to the previous wave in February 2009, conducted by Bayt.com and YouGov.
While respondents remain largely pessimistic about their current financial position, the country's economy and whether or not it's a good time to buy goods, optimism reigns for the future, with 44 per cent believing business conditions – and 37 per cent believing their country's economy – will be better in a year's time.
On the whole, consumer confidence improved across all of the surveyed countries with the exception of Algeria; with the top two countries being the UAE followed by Kuwait at 14.2 points. Saudi Arabia marked an improvement of 6.4 points and Qatar 3.9 points.
In Levant, Syria and Lebanon reported improvements of eight and 3.3 points respectively – following Lebanon's record of continually improving consumer confidence. Despite being the only country in the last wave of the survey (February/March) to show an improvement on its index, in this wave, Algeria was the only country to move down – by 2.3 points.
The CCI is a measure of consumer expectations and satisfaction of various elements of the economy including inflation, job opportunities and the cost of living.
The CCI asks the respondents regarding their personal financial situation, and whether – since 12 months ago – they feel that they are better or worse off.
One-fifth of the UAE respondents felt they were better off now than last year, while 32 per cent stated their situation was the same and 41 per cent felt it was worse.
Across the region, the figures stayed in line with the previous wave – once again a quarter of respondents felt they were better off; 34 per cent felt they were worse off, and 33 per cent felt no change in their financial position.
Within the GCC, Saudi Arabia (28 per cent), Qatar and Bahrain (27 per cent each) recorded the most significant improvements in the region vis-a-vis personal financial position – with respondents stating that they were better off.
By contrast, Jordan's respondents were most negatively hit in terms of their financial position, with 44 per cent of all respondents stating that their financial situation had gotten worse over the past year.
Another indicator for measuring consumer confidence is assessing consumer expectations and the level of optimism towards the future. Similarly in overall consumer confidence, with an exception of Algeria, all of the countries felt an improvement. Unlike the last wave, when the UAE dropped by 12.3 points; results showed that the UAE moved up the index by a very positive 17.7 points – the highest of all the surveyed countries. Following close behind – and again marking a significant improvement on the last wave was Kuwait – which moved up the index by 17.3 points.
Around the rest of the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Qatar both enjoyed sizable improvements vis-a-vis consumer expectations following from previous drops – moving up by 7.9 and 6.9 points respectively, contrasted to Algeria's drop of 2.2 points.
However, the majority of respondents across the region feel it is not a good time to buy durable goods such as televisions, refrigerators or property (43 per cent), compared to 20 per cent who do feel it is a good time to buy such goods.
In terms of respondents' optimism for the future, over all 44 per cent believed that their financial position would be better in a year's time; with just nine per cent of respondents believing that it will be worse. In the UAE, 39 per cent of respondents believe their personal finances will get better, compared to 15 per cent that believe they may get worse, and 22 per cent believing they will stay the same.
What's more, more than a third of the region's respondents – 37 per cent – believed that their country's economy would improve in a year's time, compared to the 23 per cent who stated that it would worsen.
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