SME confidence sinks in first quarter

Confidence amongst small business owners deteriorated significantly during the first quarter of the year, with both domestic and external factors feeding their economic uncertainty, a new report shows.

The latest quarterly business trends survey — covering the three months to the end of March — from small and medium-sized business representative, Isme shows that the positive trends seen in the final quarter of 2015 were effectively wiped out in the first quarter of this year with decreases noted in nine out of the 12 sentiment indicators.

Business confidence and expectations decreased on a quarter-by-quarter basis by nine percentage points and 13 respectively. Business environment and profitability expectations were down by six points to 34% and 10 points to 26% respectively. Both current and expected sales measures were down — by 15 and nine percentage points, respectively, and export forecasts were also down.