New Zealand’s services sector continued to display contraction for a sixth consecutive month, according to the BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index (PSI).
The PSI for July was 48.9 (A PSI reading above 50.0 indicates that the service sector is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining). Although the PSI again improved from its previous month’s value, it was still well below the average of 52.9 over the history of the survey.
BusinessNZ’s CEO, Katherine Rich said that while the July result was a continued improvement from 44.3 posted in May, the sector has not experienced expansion for 17 consecutive months. For the sub-index results, Activity/Sales (47.5) was still unable to exhibit any expansion, while New Orders/Business (50.0) displayed no change. Stocks/Inventories (51.4) did show expansion for the second consecutive month, although Employment (47.1) remained in contraction for 20 consecutive months.
The proportion of negative comments for July (58.5%) was down from June (66.2%) and May (65.6%). Service sector businesses reported declining sales, reduced spending, and low confidence due to cost-of-living issues, inflation, high interest rates, and a slow economy. Other challenges included seasonal downturns, weather impacts, rising costs, staffing issues, and uncertainty from global conditions.
BNZ’s Senior Economist Doug Steel said that “combined with recent improvement in the Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI), electronic card transactions and ANZ’s Truckometer, there are accumulating early signs of life in the economy”.
