Irish consumers will spend nearly €1 billion more next year than this year. The cake is finally getting bigger, according to the latest ESRI Quarterly Economic Commentary. But there’s a catch: most of the increase is due to inflation – the volume of consumer spending might actually contract in volume terms, for a fifth year in a row.
We’ve updated our long term trend chart for consumer spending and saving using the ESRI forecasts to 2013 and our own estimates to 2016:
Every silver lining has a cloud…