Indians world's most confident consumers: Nielsen

NEW DELHI: Despite a marginal fall in the level of optimism, Indians remain the world's most confident consumers with a vast majority of them seeing bright prospects ahead on the jobs, personal finance and economy fronts, a new survey says.

According to the survey carried out by international marketing research firm The Nielsen Company, India has topped the bi-annual Global Consumer Confidence Index for the fifth time in a row.

However, the Consumer Confidence Index in India dropped marginally to 135 points in the latest survey for the first half of 2007, compared to 137 points in the 2H-06 survey.

India's score was significantly higher than the global average of 97 points, while consumers in the countries like Korea, Portugal, Hungary, Japan and Taiwan emerged as pessimists.

According to the survey, 93 per cent of consumers surveyed in India felt that their job prospects in the next 12 months were excellent to good.

"Indian consumer confidence is in line with the release of the country's latest GDP figure of 9.4 per cent, the highest growth India has posted in eighteen years," ACNielsen Executive Director (Customised Research South East Asia) Sarang Panchal said.

"It is no surprise, therefore, to see 45 per cent of Indian consumers surveyed rating their job prospects in the next 12 months as 'excellent'," he added.

The high confidence is also reflected in the way consumers view the state of their personal finances in the next 12 months, with nine of ten Indians feeling excellent or good about it.