英国消费者信心在10月大幅下滑，飙升的燃油价格让中东冲突给生活成本带来的冲击显现无遗。
UK consumer sentiment plunged in October as soaring fuel prices brought home the scale of the cost-of-living hit from the Middle East conflict.
GfK表示，其信心追踪指数跌至负24，较9月下降11个百分点。除去疫情期间，这是自2016年英国公投决定脱离欧盟以来的最大跌幅。
GfK said its confidence tracker dropped to minus 24, down 11 percentage points from September. Outside the pandemic, it was the biggest decline since Britons voted to leave the European Union in 2016.
这一跌幅抹去了夏季以来的所有改善——此前安迪·伯纳姆出任首相后迅速宣布援助因账单上涨而陷入困境的家庭。他的财政大臣约翰·希利预计将在下周的预算案中推出进一步措施。
The fall erases all of the improvement made over the summer after Andy Burnham became prime minister and swiftly announced help for households struggling with rising bills. His chancellor of the exchequer, John Healey, is expected to unveil further measures in his budget next week.
GfK消费者洞察总监尼尔·贝拉米表示：“这种恶化的速度令人震惊。”他补充说，消费者现在正面临“持续不断的生活成本压力，外加未解决的地区冲突这一国际背景”。
“The speed of this deterioration is alarming,” said Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK. Consumers are now coming under pressure from “relentless cost-of-living pressures, against an international backdrop of unresolved regional conflicts,” he added.
调查于10月1日至14日进行，正值伊朗战争的余波开始紧紧扼住家庭预算之际。
The survey was conducted between Oct. 1 and Oct. 14, a period when the fallout from the Iran war began to tighten its grip on household budgets.
柴油价格首次突破每升2英镑（2.7美元），而家庭开始面对明年1月能源账单可能上涨25%的前景。关键抵押贷款利率逼近6%，英格兰银行官员表示，他们最早可能在11月实施三年多来的首次加息。
Diesel prices topped £2 ($2.7) a liter for the first time, while households started coming to terms with the possibility of a 25% increase in energy bills in January. Key mortgage rates edged closer to 6%, and Bank of England officials indicated they could deliver the first interest-rate hike in over three years as soon as November.
GfK的报告与更广泛经济显现出韧性的迹象形成对比，表明是企业而非消费者在支撑经济。希利在10月28日的预算案前，试图将加税的讨论降至最低，以避免消费支出再次回落，他对彭博电视表示，“过去的猜测造成了真正的损害。”本月信心下降的幅度与脱欧公投后的跌幅相当。GfK追踪的所有信心指标均下降。大额购物计划大幅减少，这对即将到来的关键假日购物季的零售商来说是一个令人担忧的信号。储蓄意愿（不计入总体情绪评分）有所上升。
The GfK report contrasts with signs of resilience in the wider economy, suggesting that businesses rather than consumers are doing the heavy lifting. Healey has tried to keep talk of tax rises to a minium ahead of his budget on Oct. 28 to avoid another pullback in consumer spending, telling Bloomberg TV that “speculation in the past has done real damage.”The fall in confidence this month matched that seen in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. All confidence indicators tracked by GfK declined. Plans to make big-ticket purchases dropped sharply, in a worrying sign for retailers ahead of the crucial holiday period. Savings intentions, which are not included in the overall sentiment score, increased.
所有收入群体的情绪均恶化。高收入消费者——唯一仍在必需品之外消费的群体——遭受了最严重的下滑，信心指数下降20点，至10月的负7点。
Sentiment deteriorated across all income groups. High-income consumers — the only group still spending beyond essentials — suffered the worst decline, with confidence dropping 20 points to minus 7 in October.
英国零售联盟（British Retail Consortium）早前的一项调查显示，家庭预计未来三个月经济将恶化。
An earlier British Retail Consortium survey showed households expect the economy will worsen over the next three months.
贝拉米表示：“在没有单一重大经济事件驱动下跌、且收入、年龄和性别等所有人口统计群体全面走弱的情况下，考虑到英国政府将经济增长作为优先事项，这些发现具有破坏性。”
“With no single major economic event driving the decline, and with weakness seen across the full spectrum of income, age and gender demographic groups, these are damaging findings given the UK government’s priority of economic growth,” Bellamy said.