The overall Business Confidence Index (BCI) of SMEs for quarter Oct-Dec, 2010 is estimated at 67.0 on a scale of 0-100 (from most unfavorable to the most favorable change in the outlook). This is an improvement from the BCI of last quarter estimated at 65.6.
Within SMEs, services are expecting larger improvement compared to the industrial sector.
Gross sales, New orders, Capacity utilization and Capacity expansion recorded a value of BCI in excess of 75, indicating substantially significant improvement (greater than 10%) in the outlook of these variables during the ongoing quarter over the previous one.
Remaining variables, except Input costs, have values of BCI in the rage of 51-74, meaning favorable change to the extent of 1-10%. Only ‘input cost’ has a value of BCI below 50, implying unfavorable impact of rising cost on the performance of the SMEs.