Vietnam's consumers confident

Hanoi (VNA) - The ANZ-Roy Morgan Vietnam Consumer Confidence index in December is up again by 2.5 points to touch 144.8 points.

December's mark is a record high for Vietnamese Consumer Confidence, which finishes 2015 as the country with the highest consumer confidence in Asia for the first time.

Vietnamese Consumer Confidence is now well above its two-year average of 136.6, and is now 9.2 points above its figure in December last year.

ANZ Bank said in a report on December 23 that the rise was driven by improving confidence in the domestic economy over the next 12 months and five years.

Thirty-five percent (up one percentage point) of the Vietnamese respondents said their families were better off financially than this time last year, while 14 percent (up three percentage points) said their families were worse off.

Fifty-nine percent (up three percentage points) expected their families to be better off financially this time next year, while four percent (up one percentage point) expected to be worse off.

As concerns the overall economy, 61 percent (up six percentage points) expected Vietnam to have good times financially during the next 12 months, while nine percent, which is unchanged, expected bad times.

Sixty-six percent (up seven percentage points) expected the country to experience good times economically over the next five years, while five percent (up one percentage point) expected bad times economically.

Forty-five percent (up three percentage points) believed now was a good time to buy high-cost household items, compared to 10 percent (up two percentage points) which felt it was not.

"Vietnam's economic outperformance from both an external and now a likely domestic perspective is confirmed," Glenn Maguire, the chief economist of ANZ Bank in South Asia, ASEAN and the Pacific said.

"Our final reading of the Vietnam consumer confidence index leaves us in no doubt that the country will be one of Asia's outperforming economies in the period 2016 to 2017," he said.-VNA