However, people’s satisfaction with their current situation declined last month as lacklustre export growth led to lower incomes.

“Consumer confidence should increase continuously in the following months if there are no serious negative factors affecting political stabil?ity. However, the sub-index on [satisfaction with] the current period dropped slightly as consumers were concerned about the impacts on their current income from declining export growth,” Thanavath Phonvichai, director of the UTCC’s Economic and Business Forecasting Centre, said yesterday.

Consumers feel they still need to be cautious with their spending on durable goods and travel, particularly for purchasing a new house or new car.

The Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) for August rose to 73.2 points from 72.5 in July, echoing more positive prospects for strong economic growth, though still below the 100-point baseline.

However, consumers’ satisfaction with their current situation dropped slightly from 52.4 to 52.3 points as they worried about their incomes.

Based on the survey of 2,247 respondents, people were worried about their spending.

“Respondents said their incomes were lower because of a lack of overtime work, and lower sales from sluggish export growth. However, they were not hugely worried as there were still no signs of layoffs, but only reductions in overtime to cut costs amid declining export growth,” Thanavath said.

He said consumer confidence in the future situation had continued to grow, reflecting that consumers had high expectations for recovering exports and higher incomes in the future.

Thanavath said that with rising consumer confidence and spending, gross domestic product this quarter was projected to grow by 3-3.3 per cent, taking full-year GDP growth to 3-3.6 per cent.

Wichian Kaewsombat, assistant director of the UTCC, said other confidence indices were also more posi?tive about the economy’s growth potential.

Confidence in future income rose from 88.7 points in July to 89.7 points last month, while confidence in employment opportunity was up from 88.7 to 89.7 points. Confidence in the political situation increased to the highest figure in 18 months after the referendum approval of the draft constitution.