Consumers believe worst is over but doubt economy will recover quickly

CONSUMERS believe the worst is over for the economy but are ruling out any chance of an early return to strong conditions in the next 12 months.

Although there was a fractional decline in Irish consumer sentiment in November, the results are “fairly encouraging”, particularly as consumer confidence weakened in the US, Britain and Germany last month, according to KBC chief economist Austin Hughes.

The KBC/ESRI consumer sentiment index was at 53.6 last month, compared with 54.2 in October.