Optimism amongst privately held businesses (PHBs) around the world has bounced back to give the Grant Thornton global optimism/pessimism index for 2010 an optimism balance of +24%, compared to its lowest ever score of -16% this time last year, reported the press office of Grant Thornton Amyot.
The International Business Report (IBR) survey of over 7,400 PHBs across 36 economies, now in its 18th year, also highlights a group of ten economies where businesses are more optimistic about the outlook for their economies than International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts might suggest.
Businesses in Chile, India, Australia, Vietnam and Brazil are the most optimistic in the world, all scoring over +70%. The biggest swing in sentiment was in Hong Kong which moved from deep pessimism last year (-49%) back to an optimistic +64% this year (a 113% rise). At the other end of the scale, many eurozone countries remain pessimistic about the future; Italy, Denmark, Finland and France all scored +9% or lower with Greece (-23%) and Ireland (-42%) even more gloomy. Spain (-56%) and Japan (-72%) kept their places as the most pessimistic economies in the world, although even here the figures were slightly up on last year.
Armenian businessmen are less optimistic in their forecast for 2010, showing +32% against the last year’s +46%, and are positioned very close to the global average indicator.
When compared to the IMF's GDP figures for 2009, economies that avoided recession (for example, Australia, mainland China, India and Vietnam) or suffered a relatively minor recession (such as Brazil, Hong Kong, Canada and New Zealand) all feature, not surprisingly, at the top of the league table.
Grant Thornton Amyot LLC, the Armenian Member of Grant Thornton International, is a multi-professional group of Public Accountants and Auditors, Financial Advisers, Business, Industry, Tax and Legal Consultants.
Grant Thornton Amyot (then Amyot Exco Armenia) was founded in 1991, and has since been providing audit missions, in-depth professional consulting services, expert advice to governmental organizations, top-level enterprises, national and commercial banks in CIS countries: Armenia, Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Grant Thornton Amyot has extensive experience of audit and consulting services for different sized enterprises, commercial and investment banks in CIS countries, projects financed by The World Bank Group, UN System, EBRD, EU/EC, USAID, Eurasia Foundation, GTZ, KfW and other International Finance/Lending Institutions and Organizations.
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