Spanish and European consumers have increased confidence in their economies, but consumption is not expected to rise.

According to foreign media reports, the latest GFK European consumer sentiment survey shows that Spain’s economic outlook and household income expectations rose significantly in June. Both of these indicators have increased by 10 points, reaching the best level in the past six months. However, the willingness to consume is still low, only 29, which shows that the Spanish are still cautious in consumption.

GFK is an organization famous for analyzing the European consumer confidence index, and analyzes the opinions of people in 29 European countries every month. To this end, the agency used its own data from Germany, Poland and Britain, as well as information collected by other agencies under the coordination of the European Commission.

GFK’s report shows that in Europe, people’s confidence in their country’s economic prospects and household income is slowly increasing. However, the willingness to buy has not increased with it, and household expenditure is still shrinking.

As for Spain, the economic outlook index has experienced fluctuations this year, and it will be very negative -30 to -40 points in 2022, reflecting people’s extreme distrust of the country’s economy. However, June recorded the biggest increase in the past six months, with an increase of 11 points, raising the index to the best point of -8 points so far.

Although it will take several months to confirm the change of this trend, we can see that Spanish citizens gradually regain confidence in this indicator and get rid of 20 negative values. With the data of -8 points, Spain is only one point less than the EU average (-7), ranking 11th among the 29 countries analyzed.

Compared with other big countries, the economic climate of Spain is better than that of France (-13), Portugal (-11) and Britain (-13). Germany (4) and Italy (-2) are more optimistic than Spain. Although Germany has experienced an important nine-point decline, all countries except Germany are gradually recovering their confidence in the national economy.

The research team pointed out that this change in Spain may be influenced by optimism related to summer holidays, and good macroeconomic data released by local and international institutions have also increased people’s confidence, and holding general elections in advance may also be a factor.


Post time: Jul-28-2023