Business confidence in Australia highest in 4 years

Businesses across Australia are feeling confident about their current situations as well as the economy in the future – and the IT industry is leading the way.

Roy Morgan's Australia Business Confidence index jumped 6.1 points (5.2 percent) to 123.5 in January, representing its highest start to a year since January 2014.

With 59.3 percent, the majority of businesses are expecting 'good times' economically for Australia and over the next 12 months. Meanwhile, 56.1 percent are expecting 'good times' for Australia over the next five years and 55.3 percent saying now is a 'good time to invest' in growing the business.

"The strength in Roy Morgan Business Confidence is driven by increases in Australia's three largest States of NSW, Victoria and Queensland which all increased in January with NSW and SA now having the highest Business Confidence in Australia," says Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine.

"In contrast Business Confidence was down slightly in WA and Tasmania although Business Confidence is now above 110 in all States.

January's large increase in Roy Morgan Business Confidence was driven by rises in confidence in industries, particularly Information media and telecommunications, followed by Electricity, gas, water and waste, Construction, and Wholesale trade.

"Analysing the performance of industries in January shows that the most confident industries to start 2018 are Information media and telecommunications now at a record high, Construction, Transport, Postal - warehousing and Electricity, gas, water - waste all at multi-year highs," says Levine.

"Even more positively for Australian economic growth in the year ahead Roy Morgan Business Confidence for every industry component was in positive territory above 100 for the first time in nearly four years since April 2014 indicating that confidence is broad-based across the economy."

Some of the other statistics from the Roy Morgan Business Confidence index include:

• 36.1 percent (down 7 percent) expect bad times in the Australian economy over the next 12 months, while 36.2 percent (down 4.3 percent) expect bad times in the Australian economy over the 5 years
• 44.7 percent (up 3.5 percent) of businesses say their business is better off than this time last year compared to 26.7 percent (down 1.3 percent) that say it's worse
• 52.7 percent (up 3 percent) say their business will be better off financially this time next year compared to 18.2 percent (down 1.5 percent) that expect it to be worse
• 55.3 percent (down 2 percent) say the next 12 months will be a good time to invest in growing the business compared to the 33 percent (down 1.3 percent) that say it will be a bad time to invest