Jamaica consumer mood softens as firms grow more upbeat in Q2 2026

Jamaica’s consumers were a touch less optimistic in the second quarter of 2026, while companies grew a little more confident — the opposite of the first-quarter pattern, when household sentiment rose and business outlook weakened.

The Business and Consumer Confidence survey by Market Research Services (MRS) found consumer confidence down 2.3 per cent in the April–June period. That pullback partly unwound a 5.7 per cent gain in the preceding quarter, which had tracked the economy’s rebound after Hurricane Melissa struck in October 2025.

Business confidence, by contrast, rose 2.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2026 after sliding 6.5 per cent in the first three months of the year.

Don Anderson, chairman and CEO of MRS, linked the consumer turnaround to the usual post-election cycle and to public wariness.

“The peaks that you see there are typical of election years…those peaks represent promises that are bought into, and then fall off when they are not fulfilled,” Anderson said, pointing to a long-run chart of the survey results.

MRS has produced the Business and Consumer Confidence Indices each quarter since 2001 under the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC).

“Consumers are becoming cautious, conscious of challenges, wary of what is happening down the road; and what we find is that they have a less positive view of current business conditions,” Anderson said while releasing the results at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston on Tuesday, July 21.

He added that firms are more assertive, with a larger share ready to grow their operations.

“Even though those numbers fell off in the second quarter of 2025, we can see that businesses were still of the opinion that it was a good time to invest… . That was maintained with a slight improvement this quarter over the first quarter. So we can see businesses trying to pull themselves back,” Anderson said.