By Elizabeth Adegbesan

Business Confidence Index rose by 1.7 index points to 29 index points in November indicating rising optimism in the nation’s macro economy condition.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) disclosed this in its latest Business Expectation Survey report.

The apex bank stated: “At 29.0 index points, the overall confidence index (CI) indicated respondents’ optimism on the overall macro economy in the month of November 2019. The business outlook for December 2019 showed greater confidence on the macro economy, with 59.9 index points.

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“The optimism on the macro economy in the current month was driven by the opinion of respondents from services (16.0 points), industrial (9.5 points), wholesale/retail trade (2.9 points) and construction (0.6 points) sectors. Similarly, the major drivers of the optimism for next month were services (31.9 points), industrial (20.1 points), wholesale/retail trade (5.9 points) and construction (2.0 points) sectors “Further analysis showed that businesses that are neither import- nor export-oriented (19.6 points), both import- and export-oriented (5.0 points) import-oriented (3.7 points), and those that are export-related (0.5 point) drove the positive business outlook.”

On business confidence on own operations by sector, the report stated: “All sectors expressed optimism on own operations in the review month. Respondents from the services sector expressed the greatest optimism on own operations, with an index of 8.0 points,  followed by the industrial sector with 3.8 points, the wholesale/retail trade with 0.9 points, while the construction sector had 0.1point.”

The report noted that respondent firms identified insufficient power supply (66.3 points), high interest rate (57.8 points), financial problems (55 points), unfavourable economic climate (53.8 points), unclear economic laws (50.4 points), unfavourable political climate (45.3 points), insufficient demand (45.0 points), competition (44.7 points) and access to credit (42.5 points) as major factors constraining business activity in the current month.”

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