How Bad is it?

Maktoob and Bayt.com both released the results of their consumer confidence surveys in the past few days. A word of warning here: methodologies on both surveys is a bit sketchy since both are web based polls and the respondents are self-selecting. What does this mean? Well, only people with Internet access are likely to respond (so represent a relatively small sample pool from the region) and may have a particular bias or agenda that led them to fill out the survey.

All that said, both indicated declining optimism by respondents in the health of their home economies. Bayt.com's survey appears to be a bit more comprehensive and it found that by far, UAE citizens are most pessimistic on almost all fronts about current and future economic performance. Second to the UAE is Kuwait. Both polls found that Gulf residents in general as well as Jordanians and Syrians are more pessimistic than their counterparts in North Africa, particularly Morocco and Tunisia.

I'm not too sure either survey tells us much that is new, but it is interesting to learn that North Africa appears to be weathering the downturn a bit better than the Gulf. Perhaps it is an issue of managing expectations. Having never enjoyed the excessive riches of the Gulf economies, North Africans are not quite as let down by the downturn?

Links to the two surveys here: Bayt.com consumer confidence survey Press release on Maktoob survey