Consumer Confidence Fell 2.3%. Business Confidence Rose 2.3%. Same Quarter, Same Country.

Two numbers came out of Jamaica's business community on 21 July 2026, and they moved in opposite directions inside the same three months. Consumer confidence fell 2.3%. Business confidence rose 2.3%. Same survey house, same quarter, same island, and a household sitting one seat away from a boardroom would have read the news completely differently depending on which number reached them first.

That split is the actual story in this quarter's data, more than either number on its own. A market research firm that reports a headline confidence figure without explaining what moved it, and what didn't, is handing clients a number to repeat rather than a number to use. What follows is what the two indices are built to measure, why they diverged this quarter, and how to read a confidence swing without mistaking a routine wobble for a signal.

The Survey Behind the Number

The Business and Consumer Confidence Index is produced quarterly by Market Research Services Limited (MRS), the polling firm founded and run by Don Anderson, on behalf of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce in partnership with GK Capital. MRS has run the survey every quarter since 2001, a run of roughly a hundred consecutive releases that makes it one of the longest continuously tracked confidence series anywhere in the Caribbean. Each round interviews somewhere between 600 and 630 consumers alongside about 100 businesses, asking each group to rate current conditions and their expectations for the year ahead.

Two separate indices come out of that fieldwork, and they are not the same instrument measuring the same thing from two angles. The consumer index tracks household sentiment: whether people think jobs are plentiful, whether they expect their own income to rise, whether they see prices climbing faster than they can absorb. The business index tracks operating sentiment: whether firms see current trading conditions as favourable, whether they plan to invest or hire, whether they expect the next twelve months to be better or worse than the last. A household budget and a business's investment committee can look at the identical quarter and arrive at opposite readings, because they are answering different questions about it. That is exactly what happened between April and June 2026.

What the First Quarter Actually Recovered From

To read the second-quarter reversal correctly you need the quarter before it, and the quarter before that. Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica in October 2025, and the fourth-quarter 2025 reading showed consumer confidence down 17.5% against the same quarter a year earlier, the sharpest single hit the series recorded that year. The share of consumers who described current business conditions as positive fell to 12.6%, and the share who felt jobs were plentiful slipped from 11.7% in the first quarter of 2025 to 9.1% by the fourth.

The first quarter of 2026 clawed some of that back. Consumer confidence rose 5.7% against the prior quarter, and the positive-conditions figure improved from 12.6% to 16.8%. Anderson was careful at the time not to overstate the recovery, noting that sentiment had not returned to where it stood in the first quarter of 2025, before the storm. Business confidence told a different story in the same quarter: it fell 6.5% to 124 points, down from 136 a year earlier and a wide gap below the series' 2023 peak of 140. Businesses were still absorbing storm-related costs and disrupted trading months after consumers had started to feel the worst of it pass.

The Reversal, Quarter by Quarter

By the second quarter of 2026, the pattern flipped again. Consumer confidence gave back 2.3% of the first quarter's gain, while business confidence recovered 2.3%, clawing back roughly a third of what it had lost in the quarter before. Read the two lines side by side across three quarters and a household in Kingston and a business owner in the same parish spent early 2026 experiencing almost mirror-image quarters, out of phase by roughly ninety days.

Anderson pointed to two forces layered on top of each other. The first is the tail end of the Melissa recovery, working through businesses on a longer lag than it worked through households. The second is a pattern he has tracked across multiple Jamaican election cycles: confidence tends to peak around a general election as campaign commitments raise expectations, then soften through the following year as some of those commitments go unfulfilled. Jamaica's most recent general election was held on 3 September 2025, with the Jamaica Labour Party winning a third consecutive term under Prime Minister Andrew Holness. The second quarter of 2026 falls squarely in the window Anderson describes as typical for that post-election cooling, and he framed the consumer dip as consistent with it rather than as a new shock.

The Number Both Groups Agree On

Strip away the headline percentages and one figure sits underneath both indices without a sign flip: expectations for prices. Seventy percent of consumers surveyed in the first-quarter round said they expected significant further price increases over the coming year. On the business side, 87% of firms reported that their own prices had already risen over the preceding twelve months, and 92% expected further increases ahead. Consumers and businesses disagree about almost everything else in this data. They do not disagree about where prices are headed.

That agreement matters more for planning purposes than the quarterly swing that made the headlines. A retailer reading only the consumer confidence drop might conclude that demand is about to soften broadly. A retailer reading the price-expectation figures alongside it gets a sharper picture: household budgets are not necessarily shrinking in volume terms, they are being reallocated against an input cost that both sides of the market expect to keep climbing. That distinction changes what a business does about it, from a blanket demand-protection response to a more targeted one focused on price-sensitive categories.

Reading a Confidence Swing Without Getting Fooled by It

A 2.3% quarterly move on a series with 25 years of history is not, on its own, a large number. Consumer sentiment surveys everywhere tend to be noisier than the underlying conditions they measure, because they capture mood as much as fact, and Anderson has described Jamaican consumers specifically as prone to a knee-jerk reaction, moving quickly on recent events rather than settling into a considered view. A single quarter's dip can reflect one bad news cycle about fuel prices as easily as it reflects a genuine shift in household finances.

The discipline that separates a useful read from a headline repeated at a board meeting is straightforward: never judge a series on one data point. Line up three or four quarters before drawing a conclusion, because a single quarter cannot distinguish a turning point from ordinary variance. Check whether the consumer and business lines are moving together or apart, since agreement between the two is a stronger signal than either series alone, and divergence, like this quarter's, is itself informative about which part of the economy is under more pressure. And match the series to the decision: a business planning inventory or staffing around near-term demand should weight the consumer index more heavily, while one planning capital investment should weight the business index, because the two panels are answering genuinely different questions about the same ninety days.

What This Means for Businesses Planning Around It

For a Jamaican business reading this quarter's release, the useful takeaways are narrower than the headline numbers suggest. The consumer dip is consistent with a known, previously observed post-election pattern rather than a fresh shock, which argues against an overcorrection in demand planning based on one quarter alone. The business-confidence recovery, small as it is, coincides with firms reporting more willingness to expand, which is worth checking against sector-specific data before treating it as a broad green light. And the price-expectation figures, sitting above 85% on both sides of the market, are the steadiest signal in the whole release and the one most directly actionable for pricing and procurement decisions over the next two quarters.

None of that requires waiting for MRS's next quarterly release to act on. A business that wants a confidence reading sized to its own customer base, rather than the national aggregate, can commission that directly, and StarApple Analytics builds exactly that kind of segment-specific survey work for clients who need more resolution than a national index provides.

Caribbean AI Network

StarApple Analytics operates as the data science, business intelligence and market research practice of StarApple AI, the first artificial intelligence company built in the Caribbean. For more on the wider network of Caribbean AI organisations and research partners:

• StarApple AI, the Caribbean's first AI company, founded 2016
• Adrian Dunkley, founder of StarApple AI and the region's leading AI strategist
• Caribbean AI Association, regional standards and policy body for AI adoption
• AI Jamaica, Jamaica-focused AI policy and adoption research
• Credit Garden, AI-driven credit scoring for underserved Caribbean borrowers

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Jamaica's Business and Consumer Confidence Index and who produces it?

It is a quarterly survey run by Market Research Services Limited (MRS), founded and led by pollster Don Anderson, for the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce in partnership with GK Capital. MRS has produced the index every quarter since 2001, drawing on interviews with roughly 600 to 630 consumers and about 100 businesses each round.

What happened to consumer and business confidence in Jamaica's second quarter of 2026?

Consumer confidence fell 2.3% quarter on quarter, giving back part of the 5.7% gain recorded in the first quarter of 2026. Business confidence moved the opposite way, rising 2.3% after having fallen 6.5% in the first quarter to 124 points, down from 136 a year earlier.

Why did consumer confidence and business confidence move in opposite directions?

The two indices measure different populations answering different questions. Consumers were reporting on household budgets already stretched by price rises, with 70% expecting significant further increases. Businesses were reporting on operating conditions after a hurricane-disrupted 2025, and a growing share now see the current period as favourable for investment even as they, too, expect prices to keep climbing.

What does Don Anderson mean by calling the reversal a post-election pattern?

Jamaica held a general election on 3 September 2025. Anderson has observed across multiple election cycles that confidence tends to spike around a vote as campaign promises raise expectations, then soften in the following year as some of those promises go unmet. He described the pattern as typical of the year after an election, layered this year on top of a slower recovery from Hurricane Melissa.

How reliable is a single quarter's confidence reading?

One quarter on its own is weak evidence. A 2.3% move sits well inside the normal quarter-to-quarter noise this series has shown across 25 years of data, and consumer sentiment in particular reacts quickly to short-term events, what Anderson calls a knee-jerk reaction. The more reliable read comes from the trend across three or four quarters and from checking whether the consumer and business series are telling a consistent story or diverging, as they did this quarter.

What should a Caribbean business do with a confidence number like this one?

Treat a single quarterly move as a data point, not a forecast. Look at what is actually driving it (in this case, price expectations and post-hurricane recovery), compare it against the prior three or four quarters rather than the prior quarter alone, and weight the business-facing series more heavily than the consumer series if the decision at hand is about investment timing rather than retail demand.

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StarApple Analytics is a practice area of StarApple AI, the Caribbean's first AI company.