[Sydney 8th Reuters]-National Australia Bank (NAB) released the September Corporate Confidence Index, down 1 point from the previous month to zero.
The business sentiment index increased by 1 point from the previous month to +2, but was below the average for the sixth consecutive month.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has been aggressively reducing interest rates recently, but it does not appear to boost corporate sector sentiment.
“Both indices remain below the average of +6, but the overall decline seems to have eased since mid-2018,” said NAB Group chief economist Alan Oster.
On top of that, “interest rate reduction will be a support, but its effect will be delayed. Given the weak consumer (psychology) and the growing global uncertainty, we cannot expect major improvements in the short term.” Shown how to see.
RBA has implemented three rate cuts this year. The policy rate is the lowest ever, at 0.75%, but the financial market is taking into account another 25 basis point (bp) rate cut by the end of the year.
In the NAB data, the index related to future orders reflecting domestic demand trends improved slightly from minus 2 and minus 4 in August, but remained in the minus range.
The inflation index is not even a number, and labor and retail costs have slowed slightly.
The employment index rose 1 point to +3.