5 February 2019: The December Quarter 2018 Sensis Business Index has revealed that confidence among Queensland (QLD) small and medium businesses (SMBs) has reached a ten year high.
The report, which measures SMB activity, expectations and confidence over a three-month period, has found that due to a net confidence increase of 11 points to +55, QLD SMBs are the second most confident across all states and territories, falling only one-point behind Victoria (+56).
Sensis Chief Executive Officer, John Allan, said: "It is uplifting to see that almost seven in ten (68%) small and medium businesses in the sunshine state are feeling confident in their prospects, the strongest result seen since March of 2008."
The confidence points to the resilience of SMBs, while those who felt concerned flagged lower sales and unfavourable government policies as their key issues.
Queensland's regional SMBs were the most confident across all states and territories, sitting six points above the second highest regional balance found in Western Australian (+47) and 33 points above the least confident found in the Northern Territory (+20).
"The report also found that Brisbane businesses were only six points ahead of their regional counterparts on the confidence scale, the smallest difference recorded across the nation, indicating the high level of confidence is widespread," Mr Allan said.
Despite this, support for the State-Government continued to fall, dropping four points to -19 – a huge 17 points behind the second lowest score recorded in the Northern Territory (-2). The drop continues the trend of decreasing confidence in the Queensland Government that began following the 2015 State Election.
"The leading criticisms raised by SMBs in the survey when speaking about the Queensland Government were once again that they feel policies work against their best interest."
Other interesting findings from the report:
· Support for the Federal Government increased five-points to a positive balance of +4.
· Last quarter saw declines across all key performance indicators including sales (+2), wages (+5) and prices (+9) which became less positive, while employment (-1) and profitability (-1) fell into negative balances.
· Expectations for 2019 are all positive, with sales (+40) and profitability (+34) being the highest across all states and territories.
