High business costs and lack of credit damaging firms, survey finds
Where businesses had tried to access new or revised credit facilities, two thirds of respondents in a survey said this had been difficult.
The survey, from the Accounting Technicians Ireland, found that 44%, almost twice as many as 2010, reported an increase in business costs this year.
The number of respondents who said that the cost of doing business in Ireland has fallen over the past 12 months fell from 25% last year to 14% this year.
Of the people who said costs had risen, almost two-thirds reported cost increases of between 6% and 20%. In the 2010 survey, only 52% of respondents had experienced the same increase.
Bad debt levels appear to be falling, however, with 47% of respondents saying levels and overdue payments are higher than 12 months ago — falling from 55% in 2010.
More than one-in-three firms said that the businesses where they work had let a number of people go in the past 12 months. This figure has fallen from a level of 50% last year but 70% said they do not anticipate any increase in employment numbers over the coming 12 months, a fall from the 2010 figure of 74%.
Nearly half of all respondents felt that their job was secure for now.
There was a slight rise in the number of respondents who said salaries had increased in their workplace, up from 21% in 2010 to 23% in 2011 — the majority (88%) of these respondents said their pay had increased by up to 5%.
Chief executive of Accounting Technicians Ireland, Gay Sheehan, said: “With many accounting technicians managing key finance functions, our members are ideally positioned to gauge the business environment.
“Of concern is the fact that our 2011 business sentiment survey clearly shows that costs for business are starting to rise again.
“This is in spite of the fact that the majority of our members expect that business levels will remain steady at current levels for the coming year,” he said.
