Business confidence in India is higher than ever before if Dun & Bradstreet's latest Business Optimism Index is anything to go by.
The quarterly index, which rates the optimism among Indian industries for the forthcoming quarter, stood at 187 for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2005, up 7.47 per cent from 174 the previous quarter. The index also registered a 73.4 per cent year-on-year increase from 108 per cent last year.
The index is compiled based on responses from 350 randomly selected companies from D&B's commercial credit information file across six sectors - basic goods, capital goods, intermediate goods, consumer durables, consumer non-durables and the service sector.
Six parameters are considered when calculating the BOI - net sales, net profits, selling prices, new orders, inventories and employees.
For the upcoming quarter, the optimism index for volume of sales stood 92 per cent as against 84 per cent in the previous quarter, with 93 per cent of the respondents expecting an increase in the volume of sales. The optimism index for net profits stood at 92 per cent, up 6 per cent from the last quarter.
The optimism index for new orders stands at 91 per cent, with the service sector being most optimistic. The index for selling prices was up from 40 per cent last quarter to 42 per cent, with the basic goods segment leading.
The optimism index for inventory levels, too, was up from 47 per cent to 50 per cent this quarter and the index for employees went up from 46 per cent to 58 per cent for the upcoming quarter.
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