The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has begun the September 2025 round of its Urban Consumer Confidence Survey (UCCS) and Rural Consumer Confidence Survey (RCCS), inviting households across the country to share their views on the economy, jobs, income, prices, and spending. These surveys provide valuable insights for RBI’s monetary policy decisions.
The central bank conducts these surveys to gather public perceptions and expectations, residing in the urban and rural areas. Done on a quarterly basis, the survey assesses households’ views on general price economic situations and spending prowess.
The urban survey will be held across 19 cities, including major urban centres such as Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jammu, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Patna, Raipur, Ranchi and Thiruvananthapuram.
This round of survey will capture how urban households feel about the general economic situation, the employment scenario, price levels, and their own income and spending behaviour. To ensure broader participation, the central bank has engaged a Mumbai-based agency to conduct the field survey on its behalf.
The survey asks households to compare their current circumstances with one year ago and share their expectations for the year ahead. Respondents are asked to state whether they feel the country’s economic situation, their household income, and employment opportunities have improved, remained the same, or worsened. They are also asked to express views on overall spending, among other questions.
On the other hand, the rural survey will be held across 31 states/ UTs namely, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, NCT of Delhi, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Union Territory of Ladakh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.
The survey will collect current perceptions and one-year-ahead expectations of households on the general economic situation, employment scenario, overall price situation, own income and spending from the families residing in the rural and semi-urban areas
Selected households in these cities will be approached directly for responses. At the same time, other individuals who the agency does not contact can also participate voluntarily by filling in the survey schedule available online through the RBI’s official website.
The central bank has requested that selected participants extend full cooperation to the agencies involved, emphasising that these consumer confidence surveys provide valuable insights for monetary policy decisions.
