India second in consumer confidence index

Despite a marginal slowdown in growth, India still ranks second after Norway in consumer confidence and their attitude towards recession, says a survey by a global information and media consultancy. "One market's trash is another's treasure, Norway and India still ride the wave of economic slowdown," says the Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey conducted among 28,153 Internet users in 51 markets in Europe, Asia Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East.

Aside from consistently high consumer confidence, the two most optimistic nations in the world, Norway and India, share something in common: Their economies are benefiting from the by-products of economic slowdown. The survey says India will see its employment rate rise in inverse proportion to rich nations, thanks to the country's enthusiastic adoption of work-force optimisation practices and the outsourcing bug.

India has established itself as a hub for outsourcing technical and support staff, as belts in the world's leading economies tighten. We may well see India's economy, and the confidence of its consumers, soar. The Nielson survey says 94 percent of Norwegians and 86 percent of Indians were optimistic about their job prospects over the next year, while a staggering 93 percent Portuguese and 89 percent Japanese felt their job prospects were either not so good or downright bad.

The survey says consumers in three of the world's most developed economies - the US, Japan and New Zealand, have taken a serious turn in the last few months. Not surprisingly, consumer confidence has fared badly in the US, the world's largest economy and epicentre of the sub-prime housing and credit crises. The survey says consumer confidence fell in 39 out of 48 countries, with New Zealand, the US and Latvia suffering the deepest declines. "No region or country has been spared the domino effect of the US sub-prime and credit crisis", observed David Parma, global head of customized research for The Nielsen Company.

"The last six months have been the most turbulent period for the global economy in several decades. When the USA sneezed at the outset of the sub prime disaster nearly a year ago, the rest of the world quickly caught a cold," he said. "Consumers around the world are struggling with the same global issues that are impacting their daily lives. It's an unfortunate pendulum." Parma said on the one hand the world was witness to soaring global crude oil and commodity prices and rising interest rates, while on the other there was a fall in property prices, weakening labour markets and falling industrial output.