NZ: Focus on business surveys – ANZ

Analysts at ANZ suggest that this week they’ll explore what business surveys can tell us about the NZ economy, looking deeper than the confidence measures that grab the headlines.

Key Quotes

“Headline business confidence measures are by nature subjective and can be affected by the political cycle in addition to purely “economic” factors. But whatever the drivers of the responses, they are accurate barometers of how businesses are feeling, and the recent fall in business confidence appears to be flowing through into decisions around investing and hiring.

“Business surveys provide a broad and rich set of data, which gives useful colour on developments and helps gauge the pulse of the economy. The data has its limitations (as all data does) and should be interpreted within the wider context of the economic information available. But to ignore business surveys is to overlook important information about what businesses are experiencing, how that is affecting their decisions, and the implications for the wider economy.”