Johannesburg - Durbanites have a more optimistic outlook for the SA economy over the next six months than Capetonians and Johannesburg residents.
This is according the MasterCard Worldwide Index of Consumer Confidence for the first half of 2009, released on Thursday.
The SA portion of the survey, which focused on the market's three main urban centres - Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban - showed Durban scored 89.6 out of 100, while Johannesburg and Cape Town had scores of 83.3 and 57.3 respectively.
Cape Town's score is its lowest ever, according to the index. "The decline in Cape Town perhaps has a lot to do with the fall in the financial market, as many big asset managers are based in Cape Town," he said, adding that the area has also been hit by a decline in tourism - both domestic and international - which is one of its core industries.
"The Johannesburg consumer outlook, though still very high and up from six months ago, remains short of where it was a year ago," said T-Sec economist Mike Schüssler, who spoke to Fin24.com shortly after the release of the index. "People simply haven't taken notice of South Africa's weakening economic position".
The index, which is based on a survey that shows consumer confidence on prevailing expectations in the market for the next six months, showed that SA overall scored 78.7 out of the highest possible consumer confidence level of 100.
It's calculated using percentage response figures on answers to questions relating to five key economic indicators, which are employment, economy, regular income, stock market, and quality of life. It looks at people who have a bank account (in some form or another) between the ages of 18 to 64.
It showed that only 14.7% of the 3 200 respondents said that they expected the SA economy to become worse, while 56.5% who expected an improvement and the rest expected it to stay the same.
"What's interesting is that Cape Town's confidence is negative but Durban's is positive, which is probably because a lot more people in KwaZulu-Natal receive a regular income rather than those in the Cape do," he said.
They may not be employed, but they receive welfare, and they go to shops and buy goods, probably have a cell phone, but are not attuned to stock markets, the news or the global economy, he said.
As has been the case since MasterCard began conducting the survey, the indicator that South Africans feel most optimistic about is regular income.
"This is the only indicator that increased over the last year. This demonstrates once again that social welfare payments, as well as other forms of income, are seen by South Africans as a major stability factor in their lives."
In SA, about 13 million people receive welfare payments, and because the survey talks to banking customers, they will be optimistic about their income but worried about their employment, he said.
"Consumers were rightfully less optimistic about employment prospects in the next six months, as the major newspapers headlines were already screaming about new job losses being announced."
While SA consumer confidence is still shy of its historical average, as well as its score a year ago, it is nevertheless on the rise again.
According to the index, SA climbed in the MasterCard Worldwide Index of Consumer Confidence's overall rankings, and is now the second-most optimistic country in the Middle East and Africa region.
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i ain't feeling to optimistic though...