Ammon News - BEIRUT (The Daily Star) - Consumer confidence in Lebanon remains the lowest compared to its regional peers despite marginal improvement, showed the MasterCard index of Consumer Confidence released Tuesday. “Consumers in Lebanon are largely gloomy about all five indicators measured in the index although some improvement in sentiment was shown when compared to the previous edition of the survey released six months ago,” said the multinational financial services corporation Tuesday.

The index shows a marginal improvement to 26.9 from 26.8 earlier this year.

Consumers under the age of 30 are much more pessimistic scoring more than 14 points lower than those above thirty, the survey shows.

“Younger consumers in particular have a bleak view, which is strongly influenced by the social unrest and political uncertainty emerging from events in the region,” said Basel Eltell, vice president for Levant at MasterCard.

Yet, Lebanon scored far lower from unrest-ridden Egypt which scored 54.1.

The Gulf Cooperation Council continued to boost the highest confidence levels in the region.

Kuwait overtook Qatar as the market with the highest level of confidence scoring 96.8. Saudi Arabia and Oman also reported strong confidence, scoring 93.3 and 87.1, respectively.