Small vote of no confidence 10-34 27th Feb 2008

Results from a Sensis Business Index (SBI) survey show that small businesses have doubts about the economy and the federal government. The quarterly survey indicated a drop of 36 percentage points measuring confidence in the economy and a fall of 34 percentage points in the category rating approval of the federal government.

SBI report author Christena Singh implied that small businesses feel swamped by national and global trends, such as rising interest rates and decreased consumer confidence.
 
"Interest rates is the overwhelming economic issue coming forward from small businesses this quarter," she reports. "On top of that, we also saw concerns about the global economic situation, we saw concerns about businesses feeling lowing levels of consumer spending and we saw concerns about stockmarket volatility."
 
Singh also indicated that respondents were pessimistic about the changes to industrial relations legislation.
 
The survey collated responses from 1,800 small businesses in the three months to February.