New Zealand business sentiment improved starkly in the last three months of 2019 from the decade-low hit the previous quarter, a private think tank says

A net 21 per cent of firms surveyed expected general business conditions to deteriorate compared with 40 per cent – the worst reading since March 2009 – in the previous quarter, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research’s (NZIER) quarterly survey of business opinion (QSBO) showed.

“Overall what we see is an improvement in confidence across all the sectors, but particularly the manufacturing sector,” said Christina Leung, NZIER principal economist, cautioning that firms’ expectations of demand for their own business which was more likely to reflect slower economic growth, was relatively weak.

The survey’s measure of capacity utilisation was 92.0 per cent, from the previous quarter’s 92.4 per cent.