Australia’s business confidence is at its highest level since January, according to the latest Business Confidence survey from Roy Morgan Research.
The November 2014 survey of over 1,099 Australian businesses revealed a 7 per cent rise from October, with confidence currently standing at 123.0. This is above the four-year average of 118.2.
At its current point, business confidence is only 13.3 points below the results seen in October 2013, which saw a peak of 136.3.
Norman Morris, Industry Communications Director, Roy Morgan Research, said these results highlight a positive outlook for the coming year and that Australian businesses should see it as opportunity for expansion.
“The improvement in business confidence in November was due largely to a big increase in the feeling that the next 12 months would be a good time to invest in business expansion,” Mr Morris said.
“Economic growth depends to a large extent on increased business investment and in November the proportion of businesses considering that the next 12 months would be a good time to invest in growing their business increased to 62 per cent, which was the highest level since January and well up on pre-federal election levels of 55 per cent in July 2013 and 56 per cent in August.”
Mr Morris added that while confidence is moving up, unemployment is still an issue.
“Unemployment remains a major problem with the Roy Morgan unemployment level in November reaching 10.0 per cent, which was up from 9.1 per cent in October,” Mr Morris said.
“In addition to this, November was not a good month for the ASX which fell 3.9 percentage points, and the survey was conducted before the poor growth figures were released by the ABS last week.”