Having slipped from -9 to -13 index points during the second quarter of 2021, the FNB/BER Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) recovered some lost ground to -10 in the third quarter of 2021.
That’s according to the latest data released by the Bureau for Economic Research (BER), which suggests that the fact that consumer sentiment did not deteriorate further on the back of the violent protests and rampant looting that tore through KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng during July points to a level of resilience among consumers, and by extension consumer spending, during the third quarter of 2021.
“While the latest CCI reading of -10 remains well below the average CCI reading (of +2 since 1994) and therefore denotes depressed consumer confidence levels, it is nevertheless quite close to the reading of -9 recorded just prior to the onset of the Covid-19 epidemic in South Africa (in the first quarter of 2020),” says the BER.