Business confidence rises for a third consecutive period - BoG

For a third consecutive period this year, the sentiments of Ghana’s business community, as measured by the index derived from the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) Business Confidence Survey, has depicted rising confidence in the prospects of their businesses.

In the latest survey, the sentiments have further improved to 99.6 percent in October 2019 compared to 95.1 percent recorded in the same period of 2018.

Sentiments of the business sector dampened marginally during the second survey in June 2019 to 94.1 percent from 94.3 percent in April 2019. However, business confidence made a recovery in August 2019 as shown by the index climbing to 98.1 percent.

The rebound in business confidence has been attributed mainly to favourable company and industry prospects, the positive macro-economic growth outlook and declining lending rates.

This economic indicator measures the amount of optimism or pessimism that business managers have about the prospects of their companies, as well as providing an overview of their impressions about state of the economy.

The Business Barometer Indicator (BBI) of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), similarly recorded a rising confidence from 99.8 in first quarter to 103.2 points for the second quarter of 2019.

Nonetheless, in this second half of 2019, the Association has pointed out that high cost of raw materials, and electricity, as well as the current tax regime remain major constraints to growth of local industry.