New Zealand’s services sector started 2018 with a healthy level of expansion, according to the BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index (PSI).
The PSI for January was 55.8, which was very close to the December result of 56.0 (A PSI reading above 50.0 indicates that the service sector is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining).
BusinessNZ chief executive Kirk Hope said that the last five months have seen the overall PSI result within a very tight band of just 0.8 points, indicating the sector continues to tick along at a consistent pace.
“While the proportion of positive comments for January (59.6%) was largely unchanged from December (60.0%), the sub-index of new orders/business (57.6) fell below the 60.0 point mark for the first time since April 2017. Given new orders/business is a lead indicator for activity/sales, this will be one to watch in the next few months”.
BNZ Senior Economist Craig Ebert said that “while the PSI is relatively robust, combined with the Performance of Manufacturing Index it nonetheless signals something of a slowing in GDP growth for the near term”.