After a rough three years, the chief financial officers at companies across Central Europe have started feeling more confident, according to a recent survey conducted by Deloitte with 580 CFOs from the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. “Nearly half of Czech financial managers (43 percent) have a positive financial outlook, while over a year ago it was only a third (32 percent),” wrote Martin Tesař, managing partner of Deloitte’s audit department.
A year ago, Deloitte got a completely different reading, with 20 percent of respondents reporting decreased confidence. This year, however, only 1.6 percent of the respondents are expecting things to stay bad. Nearly 30 percent of the respondents are predicting moderate economic growth between 1.5 and 3 percent. “Signs of improvement at companies can be observed in most categories,” Luděk Niedermayer, a Deloitte economic expert, told ČTK. He added that CFOs have successfully adapted to conditions on markets that do not grow and are not stable.
Business loans are accessible, according to 80 percent of the CFOs surveyed. Despite this, however, fewer CFOs are electing to increase company debts compared to last year. This may be the result of limited investment focus within the companies, says Niedermayer.
