Consumer sentiment in Europe improved in February, but is still very pessimistic, which bodes poorly for economic performance. Compared to other countries, however, Poland looks very good. Poles are not afraid of unemployment, and they are also less and less worried about rising prices.
Poland’s consumer confidence index stood at 1.2 points in February and was 0.4 points lower than in January. Data from the European Commission (EC) shows that. apart from Poland, only Lithuania had this index on the positive side. Extreme pessimism prevailed in Greece (-47.2), Hungary (-25.9) and Portugal (-23.3).
According to the EC’s information, consumption potential is actually the only thing we can be happy about, as the indications for industry (-16.4 points), services (-0.7 points), retail (-1.5 points) and construction (-13.7 points) are already on the pessimistic side of reality.
Why such relatively good indications for consumption? First of all, Poles are not afraid of unemployment. Actually, in Europe, only the Hungarians are afraid of unemployment, but the Polish readings are above the EU average. The second thing is the falling expectations of price growth in the next 12 months. The index fell to 23.1 pts in February from 24 pts in January, meaning that we expect the rate of inflation to decline, and the drop in expectations has been recorded for the third month in a row.
Most Poles are prepared to spend a lot in the next 12 months and here our index of 12.4 points is the highest in Europe. In second place is Lithuania with 6.1 points and that’s it for the optimistic side of the continent. The retail trade is signalling a decline in inventory growth (the index fell from 4.7 to 4.4 points), which only adds to the argument for a good assessment of consumption in our country.
On the other hand, inventories of finished goods in industry are rising, but the readings are not very negative (2.6 points, up from 1.9 points in January). The situation is relatively best in the service sector, where companies’ willingness to hire in the next three months has even increased.
Arkadiusz Słomczyński