Bogdan Tudorache

The most recent results of the Foreign Investors Council’s (FIC) Business Sentiment Index raise some important worries and leave open a big question mark which can be answered with the next survey in the second half of 2019, according to an FIC release.

For several years now, with each edition of the sentiment survey FIC noted an important dichotomy: companies were expecting strong growth but were increasingly concerned about the predictability of regulatory, legislative and fiscal environment. What is different in the March 2019 edition is that companies continue to be worried about the quality of regulations and lack of predictability but on top, a number of FIC members are more skeptical about the further growth in their business:

• 24% of respondents expect their revenues to contract compare to 14% one year ago;
• 20% expect their business to contract compared to 12% in March 2018;
• Roughly 20% see both their export and domestic markets contracting, double than 6 months ago;
• 30% expect their results for the next 12 months to be worse than the previous, up from 15% in 2018;
• 35% see a decline in their investments compared to 19% in 2018;
• 37% expect to hire less workers compared to 17% one year ago;

For this edition of the survey 47 out of 125 FIC members responded.