Good times are here again

HOUSEHOLDS: NOW HAVE MORE IN THE POCKET THAN LAST YEAR, THANKS TO LOWER INTEREST

- Adriaan Kruger

People believe things are going much better in South Africa than a year ago. Remember the dark days in November last year, when everybody was literally sitting in a dark room for a few hours every day - probably stressing about high fuel prices, expensive food and a currency that made a holiday unaffordable?

National elections were only a few months away and every newspaper reported crime and corruption and published stories about worsening personal finances.

A few small improvements have changed things for the better and the overwhelmingly negative sentiment quickly reversed, and there is a statistic to prove it.

The FNB/BER Consumer Confidence Index for SA, published every quarter by FNB and Stellenbosch University's Bureau for Economic Research, jumped from a negative 15 points a year ago to negative five points in the third quarter of this year.

It was at a record-low negative 25 points in June last year.

"Although the latest reading remains slightly below the long-term average of the index, which has been at zero since 1994, it marks the highest level of confidence since the first half of 2019," says FNB chief economist Mamello Matikinca-Ngwenya.