New Zealand: Business confidence improves in June
Latest reading: Business confidence came in at 46.3 in June, up notably from May’s 36.6. The ebbing of global tariff turmoil after the U.S. and China rolled back levies on each other’s goods likely boosted sentiment.
However, reported past activity—which has the strongest correlation with GDP—declined in June.
Panelist insight: ANZ Bank analysts, who compiled the business sentiment survey, said:
“Costs are still going up and margins are being squeezed, with low turnover and a highly competitive environment making it very difficult to recoup margins. Dark clouds globally are impeding risk-taking, though we did see the rebound in many forward-looking activity indicators that was presaged by the intra-month data in May. But in terms of what firms are actually experiencing, there’s been a bit of a slump recently in both activity and employment. While economic growth in Q1 was decent at 0.8% q/q, the omens for Q2 are not looking nearly so positive.”