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Speaker 1: Westpac, in its latest consumer confidence survey, has found that

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Speaker 1: we're down eight points this month to eighty nine point two.

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Speaker 1: A number over one hundred is positive, so we're a

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Speaker 1: bit off that Wellington in the Doldrums South Island is

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Speaker 1: particularly south of the South, looking quite good. A lot

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Speaker 1: rosier there. Westpac senior economist Statis Ranchot is with me tonight,

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Speaker 1: good evening.

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Speaker 2: Hey Ryan, how are yeah? Good?

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Speaker 1: Thank you? So this is what do you put it

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Speaker 1: down to global factors the ongoing cost of living feeling.

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Speaker 2: I think both of those factors are raising a lot

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Speaker 2: of concerns for household right now. The global outlook has

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Speaker 2: become just so much more on certain just over the

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Speaker 2: past couple of weeks, and many households are still dealing

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Speaker 2: with the impact of big consumer price raises over the

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Speaker 2: last couple of years.

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Speaker 1: We were coming out of it though, when we were

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Speaker 1: on the up, and this is a setback in our confidence,

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Speaker 1: isn't it.

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Speaker 2: Confidence has taken a little bit of a step down

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Speaker 2: after it's been trending high for the past year. I

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Speaker 2: think if we look to the rest of this year,

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Speaker 2: we are going to see confidence and economic activity continuing

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Speaker 2: to climb. We've had some big interest rate reductions and

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Speaker 2: we haven't felt the full impact of that yet. But

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Speaker 2: as people roll into last six mortgage rates, I think

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Speaker 2: we'll see a gradual recovery. But the key thing here

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Speaker 2: is it will be a gradual recovery in the economy.

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Speaker 1: Do you think does this survey indicate that it might

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Speaker 1: take longer than we otherwise thought it would have.

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Speaker 2: I think we weren't expecting to see things turning around

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Speaker 2: too quickly. It takes a while for those interest rate

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Speaker 2: cuts to flow through. Since most of us fix our

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Speaker 2: mortgages for one to two years, we're really going to

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Speaker 2: see a lot of households rolling onto laur rates in

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Speaker 2: the second part of the year, and that's when we'd

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Speaker 2: expect to see things really turning around.

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Speaker 1: All right, doesn't sound like you're panicking. That's good to hear,

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Speaker 1: Statista Ranchod with us wes PAC Senior Economists. For more

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Speaker 1: from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to news talks.

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