Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

Business optimism up despite Gujarat: D&B survey

BS Corporate Bureau

Business optimism in India during the April-June quarter has improved significantly notwithstanding the continuing carnage in Gujarat and the reverses faced by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the recent assembly elections, a survey by Dun & Bradstreet, the global provider of business information has concluded.

The survey finds that most of the respondents expect a higher turnover and an increase in new orders, but are pessimistic about bottomline growth.

D&B, announcing results of its Business Optimism Index survey for the April-June quarter this year, said the optimism indexes have gained ground in all the six specified parameters - net sales, net profits, selling prices, new orders, inventories and employee optimism.

Of these, the two vital optimism indexes, net sales and new orders, have recovered by 24 and 28 points respectively over the figures recorded in the previous quarter.

D&B expects both these indexes to continue growing steadily in 2002 on strength of the projected global recovery, "provided the monsoon is normal".

As many as 49 per cent of the respondents expect an increase in sales volume during the current quarter, while only 15 per cent expected a decline, resulting in an optimism index of 34 per cent, which is 24 points higher than in the first quarter of this fiscal.

However, despite the recovery, the optimism index for net profits remained negative for the fifth consecutive quarter.

Where 33 per cent respondents expected an increase in profits, 34 per cent projected a decline.

Overall, the resultant index, at minus one per cent, is a 38 point improvement over the January-March quarter this year.

D&B's index is arrived at on the basis of a quarterly survey of business expectations conducted on a sample of companies randomly selected from its commercial credit file.

The sample for the survey includes companies from sectors including manufacturing, wholesaling, retailing, construction and service sectors.

The optimism indexes for the selling prices and inventory levels in the survey showed an improvement of 14 and 4 points respectively.

In the employee parameter, 94 per cent respondents expect no change in their employee levels, while only 3 per cent expect a decline.

Powered by

ALSO READ:
Gujarat riots not to hit FDI flow, says PM
Gujarat incidents will not affect FDI flow: Sinha
Canada says FDI flows to India may be hit by riots
CII says riots not to hit FDI flows
The Rediff Budget Special
The Rediff-Business Standard Special
Money

Tell us what you think of this report