New Zealand BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index rose from 52.0 to 54.5 in January. Looking at some details, activity/sales rose form 51.9 to 52.1. Employment rebounded strongly from 46.9 to 51.9. New orders/business dropped from 57.7 to 54.5. Stocks/inventories rose from 51.6 to 54.3. Supplier deliveries dropped from 53.9 to 52.0.
BusinessNZ chief executive Kirk Hope said: “Despite the halt in lower expansionary levels, the trend of a higher proportion of negative comments continued in January (61.7%), compared with 58.2% in December and 47.3% in November. The holiday season was a common theme, along with the shortage of labour and general market uncertainty that has been evident for some months now”.
BNZ Senior Economist Doug Steel said that “as encouraging as January’s PSI result might look, we are reluctant to read too much into one month’s result – especially around the holiday period”.
