All-round improvement in business sentiments in Q2, shows NCAER survey

A survey by prominent economic think-tank NCAER showed an all-round improvement in business sentiments in the second quarter of the current fiscal.

The Business Confidence Index (BCI) rose from 128 in the first quarter of the current fiscal to 140.7 in the second, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) said.

The BCI was also higher than 132.5 in the year-ago period, the NCAER said.

The NCAER-NSE BCI was driven by four components -- overall economic conditions will improve in the next six months, financial position of firms will improve in the next six months, present investment climate is positive, and present capacity utilisation is close to or above the optimal level.

"The share of positive responses was higher for all four components of the BCI in 202324:Q2 compared to 202324:Q1," showed the 126th Round of NCAER Business Expectations Survey (BES) in September 2023, with support from the NSE.

The survey is based on responses from 500 companies.

"Business sentiments were relatively more buoyant about domestic markets than external markets. The share of firms expecting production, domestic sales and pre-tax profits to increase was more in the second quarter of 202324 compared to the first," the survey said.

In contrast, a lower percentage of firms expected exports of their products and imports of raw materials to increase in the September quarter compared to the April-June period.

Regarding expectations about future price trends, sentiments were muted for prices of inputs and outputs with a lower percentage of firms expecting prices to rise in the second quarter compared to the first.

NCAER is one of the country's oldest and largest independent economic think tanks, set up in 1956 to inform policy choices for public and private sectors.