A LATEST Zimbabwe Statistics Agency (ZimStat) survey report says the majority of companies are pessimistic about the economic situation in the country.
In its second quarter 2023 business tendency survey report released on Friday, Zimstat said business entities had expressed concern over the general decrease of demand for goods and services.
The Zimstat survey was conducted through interviews with senior executives drawn from 412 companies from the wholesale and trade, accommodation and food services, financial and insurance activities, transport and storage and construction sectors.
Zimstat said there was a negative balance of opinion across all sectors on the business situation in the country.
“Confidence indices for accommodation and food services, financial and insurance activities, transport and storage sectors dropped in the second quarter as compared to the first quarter of 2023, indicating that respondents were pessimistic about the business situation,” said ZimStat.
“The construction confidence index was -29,4 in the second quarter of 2023, up from-35,0 in first quarter 2022.The retail confidence Index was -4,5 in the second quarter slightly up from -5,2 in the first quarter 2023.
“Respondents in the accommodation and food services, transport and storage, financial and insurance activities as well as the wholesale and retail trade sector, cited competition in their own sector as the major limiting factor for business expansion.”
The proportion of companies expecting the business situation to improve during the period July to September 2023 was 24,6% for all sectors.
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“Across all sectors, 45,2% of the respondents viewed their establishments’ current business situation as being satisfactory with reference to the second quarter of 2023,” Zimstat said.
“Negative balances of opinion were observed across all sectors, ranging from -47.6 percentage points (pp) in wholesale and retail trade to -7.4pp in financial and insurance activities.
“Respondents in all surveyed sectors, except construction, cited competition as the major limiting factor for business expansion. Insufficient demand was cited as the major constraint affecting expansion of business in the construction sector.”
