The survey which sampled the opinion of 219 business leaders from banking and finance (34%), construction (25%), manufacturing (9%), IT and telecoms (17%), among others, shows that more than 80% of them are confident about the performance of their businesses in 2014 and are ready to commit more investment to purchase of machines and recruitment.
Asked about their greatest worry for business in 2014, 60% of them pointed to the potential instability of the business environment which could be caused by political upheaval as a threat. 56% identified lack of finance for business expansion as a potential threat to business. While 52% and 48% of the leaders identified poor regulatory environment/corruption in governance and the electric supply challenge as potential threats to business respectively. Other identified threats are worsening infrastructure (48%), Poor performance of the economy (36%) and unclear tax system (36%).CEOs
More than half, 60%, of the business leaders said they are confident about the outcome of the power sector reform, while 20% said they are not sure if the process will yield positive results. Others had no opinion on the subject.
As for the impact of government policies on their businesses, more than half said government policy have no real effect on their operations, while 20% of them said government policies have had positive impact on their operations in the past few years. 20% said government policies have had negative impact on them.
In 2014, business leaders anticipate that most of their costs will center on power generation, personnel, machines and government regulation. Based on historic records for 2013, 64% of respondents said most of their business spending was on power generation, 56% said they spent the most on personnel costs, while government regulatory activities account for most of the spending of 24% of the leaders. Only 12% of respondents said most of their spending center on machines.
From all indications, 2013 was a good year for most of the business leaders, more than three-quarters of all responding business leaders said their businesses performed fairly in 2013 while 14% said performance of business was strong, only 4 percent claimed their businesses performed poorly. For 2014, the optimism is high.
The survey was conducted between January 7 and February 3. Thirty-six percent of the respondents are business veterans who have spent over 12 years in business, 24% of them have spent 8-11 years in business while 20% of them have spent 5-7 years in business. Most of them are either business owners or top managers in corporate institutions.
A similar survey conducted by Gallup Analytics in the United States (US), on the United States did not yield results as positive as that conducted for BRIU on the Nigerian economy, though there were certain similarities.
Specifically, U.S. small-business owners were slightly more negative than positive as they look ahead to 2014. Twenty-eight percent say they are less optimistic about their business’ future going into 2014 than they were going into 2013, while 23% say they are more optimistic. The rest say their optimism is about the same.
In the USA, business owners were asked to name the most important challenge they face today. Their responses fall into two broad categories-those that represent external forces largely out of the owner’s control, and internal business factors that the owner more directly controls.
The most frequently mentioned external challenges include the direction of the economy, the potential effect of healthcare policy and Obamacare, the government in general, government regulation, and taxes. About half of small-business owners see one of these issues as their biggest challenge at this point. This is similar to Nigeria except for the shadow of impeding elections.
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