Households

As before, evaluations of the current status of the country and of the personal well-being contrast with the projections of the future. Assessments of personal well-being, both present and future, are much better than the assessments of the status of the country's economy. However, only 12% of households in November 2022 believe now is a good time for large purchases, which indicates a certain level of consumer depression.

The value domain of the Consumer Confidence Index and the expectations component referring to future expectations about the country were in the negative range in all groups and in all periods, however, compared to December 2021, in April 22, the transformation took place: in December, the component of the country’s future was significantly lower than the entire index in most groups,i.e. Belarusians expected the situation in the country to worsen, but in April the situation changed dramatically — the future component was higher compared to the entire index, which means that Belarusians expected the situation to improve. In August and November 22 both indicators do not differ from each other on average: the index is higher than the future component in some groups and vice versa in other groups. Average value for both is -18.6% in August and -15.0 in November, however there is the only huge group with the positive values of the future component — agriculture workers with 1.3% in August and 12.5% in November.

The value of the Consumer Confidence Index, including all 5 components (by the Rosstat methodology) was -28% in April 2022 in Belarus (a decrease of only 3 percentage points compared to December 2021), while the index value in Russia was -21% in February 2022 (it grew by 2.4 percentage points). In August 2022 the index increased to -23% surprisingly.

The index values in December 2021 and April 2022 in Belarus were similar to the index values in Russia during the introduction of the COVID-19-related restrictions in the 2nd and 4th quarters of 2020, however the 2nd quarter of 2022 in Russia shows us the huge decrease of the index to -31%, which is the lowest value since 2015. In the 4th quarter of 2022 the index in Belarus continued improving up to -19%, but in Russia it remained at the level of the 3rd quarter — ~-23%.

The Consumer Confidence Index, excluding the component of the current state of the economy (by the Eurostat methodology) was -23% in April (it decreased by 4.3 percentage points), which was still below most European countries, despite much larger declines of the index in many of these countries. 

After Russia invaded Ukraine, the indices of all countries, except Turkey, have dropped significantly (see the directions and length of the arrows on the chart in Aprile), while the Belarusian index has deteriorated only by 4.3 p.p. in April 22, which had allowed Belarus to be among top 8 countries with the smallest index decline. 

In August 22 the index is - 18.4% for Belarus and increased by 4.6 p.p, while all European countries except for Turkey and Albania continue dropping.

In November 22, the index improved to -15.0%, which is the 3rd absolute result in Europe: only Lithuania (-9.2%) and Montenegro (-8.6) have higher indices.

In November 2022, the share of people who reported their decreased income over the past month decreased and amounted to 43%. If those, who only refer to the forex rate changes as the reason for their income decline, are excluded, then the share drops to 40%; and if those, who refer to price increases and forex rate changes as the reason for their income decline, are excluded, then the share drops to 29%.

As in December 2021, a paradoxical situation persists in the labor market. On the one hand, the share of those who have lost their jobs recently is as relatively low as 4.6%. At that, the rate of their jobless friends and acquaintances was 20.2%%.