The Hindu Business Line : NCAER business confidence index rises again

THE business confidence index (BCI) of the Indian industry, both the private and the public sector, has shown a slight improvement, according to the latest round of survey for January 2005 undertaken by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) here.

In its quarterly review - Business Expectations Survey - the council said the index, in the current round, has gone up by 6.5 percentage points to 142.5, over its October 2004 level of 136, but is still just a shade lower than its value in April 2004.

However, BCI, which had been consistently maintaining an uptrend since July 2004, reflects the growing optimism of the business sector, the council said.

The increase in BCI is also fairly broad-based across sectors and regions and the four dimensions - overall economic conditions, investment climate, financial position of the firms and capacity utilisation. While among various sectors, the consumer goods sector is most optimistic, the West is the most upbeat about business prospects across regions, in spite of a fall in BCI.

Public sector firms have displayed a substantial jump in confidence levels successively over the last two rounds.

The council said the impact of the current upswing in the economy has been rather subdued on sales, production and exports of companies in this round.

Of the firms that reported to being exporters, 43 per cent said they had been adversely hit by the recent appreciation of the rupee against the dollar

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