Belizeans Show Increasing Optimism in Economic Outlook, Says New Study

And while Belizeans may be feeling the pinch at the pump and the grocery store, new data shows that they are becoming increasingly optimistic about the country’s economic prospects. In September 2023 the Statistical Institute of Belize launched the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI), a new study in Belize that measures how the public feels about their current economic situation and their outlook for the. After five months of collecting data, the SIB has seen that Belizeans are still pessimistic, but their views have improved considerably. Jacqueline Sabal explained that the questions for the CCI were attached to the September 2023 Labour Force Survey.

Jacqueline Sabal, Ag, Statistician 1, Statistical Institute of Belize: “It measures, in a nutshell, public sentiment. So we want to know how consumers are feeling. That’s the basis or the gist of the Consumer Confidence Index. We want to ask people how they’re feeling. So like I mentioned, we have indicators like GDP and CPI that was also presented today, where that gives an indication of what has already taken place. So with this Consumer Confidence where you ask people how they feel it can provide a gauge of future expectations or future economic growth because household spending accounts for a significant portion of GDP and overall economic growth. So when a huge number of people either become more optimistic or more pessimistic about the state of the overall economy you can use that to kind of gauge what’s going to happen in the future. So it’s a good early indication of future economic activity. Our survey has 10 questions, but we only use seven of those questions to compile the index. So they’re all close-ended questions. We ask persons how they’re feeling about their present household financial situation. We ask them how they feel about their household’s future expected financial situation. So if they think things will get better, or if they think it will get worse. Regarding the present now, we’re asking if they think it has gotten better or if it has gotten worse. We also ask about general economic conditions. So do you think that the general economic conditions of Belize has gotten better or gotten worse? And then we also ask them about future, if they think it will get better, if they think it will get worse.”

Belizeans by and large have still not crossed over into the realm of being optimistic about the country’s economic outlook but the data shows that confidence was up by ten percent.

Jacqueline Sabal, Ag, Statistician 1, Statistical Institute of Belize: “Based on what was presented today we did observe that consumers were feeling pessimistic, I would like to say moderately pessimistic about the overall state of the economy. The way the index is set up is that we have like a threshold of 50. Based on the balance statistic that we use to compile, we have a threshold of 50 and then if the index falls above that then persons are feeling optimistic about things. If the index falls below that then we say persons are feeling more pessimistic. So the overall national CCI was around 43.3. That’s where the index stood. So that’s moderately pessimistic for what the index defines. During this five-month period the CCI increased by 26% from 34.3 in September to 43.3 in February. Now if we break down what drove this increase throughout this five month period consumers were consistently most optimistic regarding their expectations for the future and you notice that that index went from 41 to 55.7 in February. That 55.7 is above the optimistic threshold of 50. So you can say that from September to February consumers were more optimistic about their future expectations. Regarding the present household and general economic conditions, this increased from 33.9 to 40 as consumers – the 40 is below the 50 so we’ll say that consumers were less pessimistic about their present household and general economic conditions. And then we have the Durable Goods Index which also increased from September to February from 28.1 to 34.1. If we look at how this national CCI translates to a percentage change, we can see that the growth in the index from September to- we can see a significant growth – can see the growth in the index from September to November. However, consumer sentiment has remained at a considerably lower level since then.”

Data for the CCI will be gathered though a combination method, using the April and September labor force surveys, as well as conducting phone surveys for the other ten months of the year.