Tuesday, 30 December 2014 02:23
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The January edition of business magazine LMD reports that “the impending presidential election appears to have curtailed the recovery of the LMD-Nielsen Business Confidence Index (BCI),” adding that the index “remains more or less at the same level of 142, as in November”.
Nielsen’s Managing Director Shaheen Cader states, in LMD: “The business community usually has concerns about the impact on business of election-related activities – and this time, too, we see the same pattern.”
According to the magazine, “businesspeople are less pessimistic about the economy, in general, with only 15% (November – 23%) of respondents stating that conditions ‘will get worse’ in the coming 12 months”.
LMD also notes that “there’s good news on the investment front, with almost half (up from 37% in the previous month) of those surveyed viewing the current funding climate in a positive light”.
A spokesperson for LMD says that “as one might expect, businesspeople are expressing concern over the implications for businesses, of the outcome of the presidential poll – and maybe they’re worried about whether the political stability that the nation has enjoyed for many years will be a thing of the past”.
“Political undercurrents and somewhat benign economic conditions see the unique measure of business sentiment at a stalemate, with mixed prospects on the horizon for the New Year,” the journal’s BCI column concludes.
LMD will be released to leading bookstores and supermarkets on Friday 2 January, says a spokesperson for its publisher Media Services (for the full BCI report, go to www.LMD.lk).
