Consumer confidence increasing for the third week straight.

Consumer confidence has gained for the third-straight week in a row supported by a flattening of the coronavirus cases curve and a share market that has bounced back through the doom and gloom. Consumer sentiment has strengthened by 7.7% to 84.2% for the third week of consecutive of increases according to the latest ANZ consumer confidence survey.

“Confidence is now close to 30% above the historic low reached on the last weekend of March,” said ANZ head of Australian economics, David Flank.

Optimistic responses to the current state of the economy rose to 9.6%, whilst those believing Australia’s future economic fortunes will be positive also climbed 6.7% as well as 21.5% deeming now the perfect time to buy a major household item.

In good news for WA, iron ore prices have remained resilient amid the economic turmoil, with China showing a continued pick-up in steel production. China’s Iron and Steel Association showed output bounced back to above 2 million tonnes a day for the last 10 days of March.

This is a summary of the article ‘Coronavirus crisis: Consumer sentiment continues climb out of doldrums’ by Meilin Chew | The West Australian | Tuesday 21^st April 2020.