German Consumer Confidence Set to Stagnate in August
July 28 2021 - 1:19AM
Dow Jones News
By Maria Martinez
German consumer sentiment is expected to remain unchanged from
the previous month in August, according to data from the
market-research group GfK released Wednesday.
GfK's forward-looking consumer sentiment index is set to stay at
minus 0.3 points in August, unchanged from July, when it reached
the highest level since August 2020. Economists polled by The Wall
Street Journal had expected consumer sentiment to rise to 0.5.
"The phase where the decrease of COVID-19 incidence of infection
has come to an end and those figures are again on the rise," said
Rolf Buerkl, consumer expert at GfK.
Furthermore, the momentum for vaccination has recently slowed
down considerably, despite sufficient quantities of the vaccine
available, preventing any further significant increase in consumer
sentiment, he added.
GfK uses data from three subindexes from the current month to
derive a sentiment figure for the coming month, measuring economic
expectations, income expectations and propensity to buy. In July
both economic and income expectations showed moderate losses, while
the propensity to buy increased slightly.
After climbing to a 10-year high in the previous month, the
indicator of economic expectations fell to 54.6 in July from 58.4
in June.
"Consumers continue to view the German economy as being on the
upswing," the report said.
Income expectations also showed a moderate decline in July,
dropping to 29.0 in July from 34.1 in June, driven by inflation
expectations, GfK said. However, propensity to buy edged up to 14.8
in July from 13.4 points in June.
"Despite the current stagnation of consumer confidence, the
domestic economy will make a positive contribution to overall
economic development in the second half of the year," Mr. Buerkl
said.
Write to Maria Martinez at maria.martinez@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 28, 2021 02:14 ET (06:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.