The New Nation - Internet Edition

BUSINESS REPORT

The HSBC Group has recently conducted a regional survey of nine countries, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Bangladesh.

The objective of the survey was to capture the business confidence of Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) businesses in terms of local economic outlook, investment and recruitment plans and cross-border trading outlook for the next six months.

For the survey, SMEs were chosen based on the annual sales turnover and employee size for each country with the respondents being the key decision makers in the company's strategic direction. In Bangladesh, SMEs residing within Dhaka and nearby regions with a capacity not in excess of US$10million and having 300 employees were chosen.

As far the economic outlook went, the local respondents were divided equally regarding the performance of the economy where 35 percent said the economy would decrease by 4 percent or more and the same percentage said that the economy would increase by 4 percent or more. About 30 percent said that the economy would remain the same.

With regards to capital investment 48 percent said that they would not invest any more or even reduce, but 52 percent said that they would be investing more.

When it came to recruitment, 60 percent said that they would not recruit or even decrease, but 40 percent said that they would hire new recruits.

Most of the SMEs surveyed expected the trade with China to grow with 77 percent saying that the growth would be 20 percent or more.

However, for the rest of Asia Pacific, only 61 percent expected a growth of 20 percent or more. The SMEs also believed that trading with the rest of the world would be going up with 59 percent believing that it would go up by over 20 pecent.

In terms of regional confidence, the survey showed that despite the global economic slowdown, 60 percent of Asia's SMEs especially those in India and Taiwan were optimistic about the region's economic prospects on the second half of the year.

The survey also showed that Vietnamese SMEs were bearish about foreign trade, while those in South Korea were pessimistic about business prospects in light of economic and political instability since last year.

SMEs in Singapore an Indonesia were the least pessimistic about the economic prospects in their respective countries, the survey concluded.

Commenting on the survey, HSBC Bangladesh Corporate Banking Head, Mr MD Mahbub-ur-Rahman said that aligned with the expectations of the rest of Asia Pacific region, SMEs from Bangladesh remained upbeat about growing international trade.

Despite global slowdown, intra Asia trade is forecast to increase. The survey outcome suggests that Bangladesh SMEs are well positioned to embark on this regional growth momentum.