Australia consumer sentiment brightens in August as rates held
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FILE PHOTO: Commuters cross the street at Town Hall, after Australia's unemployment rate reached 4.5%, in Sydney, Australia, October 16, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams/File Photo
SYDNEY, Aug 18 (Reuters) - A measure of Australian consumer sentiment brightened for a second month in August as mortgage holders became less concerned about the risk of further increases in interest rates, a survey showed on Tuesday.
A Westpac-Melbourne Institute survey showed its main index of consumer sentiment rose to 88.9 in August, up 6.0% from July, when it gained 4.1%. The index was still down almost 10% from a year earlier, while pessimists continued to outnumber optimists.
Responses, which were collected from August 10 to 14, improved markedly after the Reserve Bank of Australia held interest rates at 4.35% on August 11, the institute said, following three hikes earlier in the year.
The index for responses after the meeting jumped to 91.1, compared to 83.6 before the decision. Likewise, the index for mortgage holders surged 16% for August, while that for renters fell 2.3%.
A measure of current financial and economic conditions showed solid gains, though the outlook remained much weaker.
"The improvement in forward-looking views was also much less pronounced than for the questions covering current conditions," said Luci Ellis, Westpac's chief economist.
"This suggests that pervasive uncertainty, including about the Middle East, is still weighing on sentiment to some extent.”
The index measuring whether it is a good time to buy a major household item added 8.1% to 93.8, though that was below the long-run average of 123.0.
The index measuring if it is a good time to buy a dwelling rose 12.1% to 95.7, the highest since November 2025, but again short of the long-run average of 119.
(Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
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