High confidence for Australian SMEs

Faced with an increasingly uncertain global business landscape, confidence, especially in smaller enterprises, is far from assured. Which is why increased SME confidence revealed in Bankwest's 2017 Outlook report is more startling.

According to the report, SMEs working in finance and insurance have the highest business confidence levels, for the next few months at least. The lowest confidence was recorded among SMEs in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting.

The study aimed to reveal business confidence levels of Australian SMEs at the start of 2017 and showed that SME optimism was driven by strong supply and demand as well as strong management practices. SMEs with lower confidence levels generally said that these were due to rising costs, economic uncertainty and pressures on profit margins.

According to Bankwest, the overall index was in neutral territory as optimism about the debt repayment and business prospects for the next three months was offset by concerns over both the domestic and global economy. 

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SOURCE: [Money Management]