New Zealand’s services sector continued to contract further in April, according to the BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index (PSI).
The PSI for April was 47.1 (A PSI reading above 50.0 indicates that the service sector is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining). This was down 0.1 points from March and the lowest level of activity for the sector since January 2022.
BusinessNZ chief executive Kirk Hope said while the April result was all but the same as March, the sub-index results outlined a difficult time for the sector as a whole. Although Activity/Sales (46.5) improved slightly, New Orders/Business (47.1) continued to fall backwards, while Employment (47.1) dropped to its lowest result since February 2022. Supplier Deliveries (47.6) also dropped to its lowest point since November 2022.
The proportion of negative comments from businesses continued to march upwards over April (66.3%), compared with 63.0% in March and 57.3% in February. A noticeable proportion of respondents noted the current difficult economic times, along with lingering inflationary issues.
BNZ’s Senior Economist Doug Steel said that “combining today’s weak PSI with last week’s PMI yields a composite reading that would be consistent with GDP tracking below year earlier levels into the middle of this year. That is what we expect and, if anything, the combined index suggests some downside risk to our forecasts”.
