Consumer confidence in Viet Nam dipped by five points in the first quarter to 98, below the Asia Pacific average of 106 but still higher than the global average of 92, a global survey by market research agency Nielsen has found.

The Nielsen Global Online Survey, released on Monday, polled more than 28,000 consumers in 51 countries in the Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and North America.

It was based on consumers’ confidence in the job market, their personal finances, and readiness to spend, with a score of 100 being neutral and anything above it signalling optimism.

Viet Nam continued its slide down the rank to 15th most confident country in the world.

The survey said 61 percent of Vietnamese believed the economy was in a recession, an increase of 5 percentage points from the fourth quarter of last year.

The Vietnamese people continued to be “cautiously optimistic”, with 60 per cent believing job prospects over the coming 12 months were good-to-excellent.

Despite the overall positive outlook on jobs, only 56 per cent of Vietnamese consumers believed their personal finances over the next 12 months would be good-to-excellent, a drop of 6 percentage points.

After paying for living expenses, 67 per cent would put their money into savings, followed by spending on holidays/vacations (39 per cent), new clothes (36 per cent), new technology products (36 per cent), home improvement (36 per cent) and out-of-home entertainment (32 per cent).

The rise in cooking prices was the top concern for the largest number of respondents, rising by 5 per centage points to 18 per cent.

Fuel also increased significantly as a major concern, rising by 4 percentage points to 17 per cent, and rising utility bills (electricity, gas, and heating) to 12 per cent.

Venkatesh Bala, chief economist at the Cambridge Group, a part of Nielsen, said more than half of the global consumers said they were currently in a recession, and of them 51 per cent expected to be in a recession for at least another year. There were major regional differences, however, with only 37 per cent of Asia Pacific consumers saying they were in a recession compared to 82 per cent in North America and 68 per cent in Europe.

Source: VNS