Households wary of discretionary spending

The RBI Current Situation Index has been negative in all surveys conducted in the past four years except the one in March 2019

On April 7, Reserve Bank of India released updates to its regular Consumer Confidence Survey. These refer to the 9-day period February 27 through March 8, 2021. For simplicity we will refer this as the first week of March 2021. The RBI releases two indices – the Current Situation Index and the Future Expectations Index. Both reflect net responses, i.e., the difference between respondents whose perceptions are improving against those with deteriorating perceptions. An index is computed as 100 plus net responses. It reflects views of households in state capitals of 13 large states of India. It is therefore an