Filtering Through

Our thanks once again to the members who took the time to complete the latest in our series of Business Confidence Surveys; without accurate information like this it is very difficult to represent members’ interests properly.  The States are now doing their own Business Confidence surveys; so in the spirit of healthy competition we are going to take our member engagement onto the next level, with further website development, and see who follows suit!  Read on, for other ways in which the public sector should follow the private!

So, to the results of the last quarter’s survey.  Firstly, 77 businesses took the time to respond, so we present the results as a snapshot only, this is not a full scale scientific analysis of the views of the business sector.

Given the fact that we are now almost a year on from the first political mutterings about a stimulus package to smooth the Island’s path through recession (although we weren’t calling it that at the time), we thought it was a good opportunity to focus this survey on your perception of how effective that package had been to date.  It is of course still in operation, with very recent announcements about further money for more States projects, this time to improve the sewerage system in the north of town and to repair St Aubin’s pier.

Given that “times have been tough” for some months now, how effective do you perceive the States have been, so far, in their stimulation of the economy?  Well, here are the stats: just 7% of respondents perceived that they had been helped by the stimulus package; compared to 65% who reported that they hadn’t felt the effects – 29% responded that it wasn’t applicable to them anyway. 

Secondly, respondents were evenly split with half of the businesses who replied judging that the States hadn’t been effective at all in stimulating the economy, and half reporting the States had been either effective, or fairly effective, in their attempts at stimulation.

Thirdly, it seems optimism is tentatively returning to the local economy, with 40% of respondents predicting the market will improve this year, and just 10% forecasting it to get worse – this supports other responses with 29% of respondents saying wage increases will be bigger this year than last, but 15% (12 businesses!) still expecting to make redundancies.

As ever with statistics and forecasting, drawing firm conclusions can be ill advised; so, in broad terms only, the perception is that the market will get better this year, but there is still some considerable way to go before that happens.

Interestingly though, the perception from this survey seems to be that members are equally split between those who think the States have been effective in economic stimulation and those that don’t; but very few have actually seen any impact at all on their own businesses.  So has the presentation of the success of the stimulus package exceeded the reality?  The vast majority of the money has gone to States projects, on the basis that the positive effect will then filter though the economy – but on the basis of these results, and it is only one quick survey, the question must be asked if that “filtering through” is really happening?

Or have businesses, in the main, been able to help themselves – a quarter of respondents say they’ll be changing their wage structure to keep people employed, and 41% are freezing pay. So, when times are tough the private sector does what it must to survive – is that something else the public sector can follow?