Jamaicans pessimistic about personal finance - study
Published:Friday | April 15, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Jamaicans have been found to be among the most pessimistic about their personal and financial situation, as well as business and economic conditions, according to a consumer sentiment survey conducted by the University of the West Indies.
The Department of Management Studies at the Cave Hill campus, Barbados, which undertook the survey, developed indices to measure consumers' perceptions and expectations of their personal financial situation, business, economic and buying conditions.
The indices ranged from zero, which indicates very pessimistic or a negative outlook, to 200, a very optimistic or positive outlook, with 100 representing neutrality.
The scores for the consumer sentiment index across CARICOM at the end of March 2011 ranged from a high of 85 in Guyana to a low of 53 in St Lucia or an average of 68, reflecting the pessimistic outlook among the consumers.
A similar score was obtained for the region's trading partners such as Canada with 87.3, the United States 67.5 and 38 in the United Kingdom.
The results showed that consumers in Guyana, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada are among the most optimistic while St Lucians, Kittians and Nevisians, Jamaicans and Antiguans are among the most pessimistic.
In terms of expectations, the index stood at 67, showing that consumers expect personal financial situation, general business and economic conditions to get worse over the next year, but more optimistic in this case than the major trading partners.
The consumer expectations index scores range from a high of 81 in Guyana to a low of 47 in Jamaica.
bad time for buying
The current economic conditions index stood at 70, indicating that a majority of persons in CARICOM think that economic conditions are worse than they were a year ago.
Current buying conditions index stood at 91, but still showing that consumers believe that it was a bad time to undertake any major purchases.
While current personal financial situation remained the same or got worse over the last year, expectations are for it to get better.
The survey concludes that in economies which are less dependent on tourism and international financial services consumers show more optimism.
"Consumers in those countries may have suffered less from the impacts of the global economic recession and the ensuing slow recovery," the report stated.
Consumer rating on whether their government was doing a good job in its economic policy was very poor.
j'can gov't doing poor job
On average, only 14 per cent of consumers thought their respective governments were doing a good job in terms of economic policies.
Respondents in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados and Grenada gave the highest marks to current government economic policies, rating them either good or fair.
Jamaican respondents gave the lowest grade on government economic policies. Of the respondents, 63.4 per cent believe that the Jamaican Government was doing a poor job, 30.7 per cent said fair and only two per cent said they were doing a good job.
The other four per cent indicated that they did not know.
Likewise, over 50 per cent of respondents in St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago thought government's economic policies were poor.
A total of 6,157 responses were collected across the countries and a minimum response rate of 500 persons per country had to be obtained for the country to be included in the survey.