The percentage of companies planning to increase investments for the fourth consecutive quarter remains below 10%, with the latest result being the worst in the history of the entire measurement, i.e. since January 2015. In Q2 2022, no entrepreneur plans to invest more, while the majority (90%) do not expect any “moves” in this area, according to the study “EFL Barometer for Q2”.
“We have not had such negative opinions of Polish entrepreneurs regarding investments since the beginning of our research, i.e. for over seven years. Today, no one points to higher investment expenditures, we have had a handful of such ‘optimists’ every quarter for a year now. And we cannot really say about investment optimism. speak since the beginning of the pandemic, because only once – in the middle of last year – a much larger group of companies, 25%, indicated an increase in investments.And when most of us have learned to function and plan new ones with the coronavirus, war broke out beyond the eastern border. Of course, of course. , it must have influenced such pessimistic indications of Polish entrepreneurs,” said the president of the European Leasing Fund (EFL) Radosław Woźniak.
As in the previous measurement, the views on investments do not coincide with those on external financing needs.
In the latest measurement, the percentage of companies anticipating an increase in demand for external financing has increased from 17% in the first quarter of 2022 to 29% in the second quarter of this year. This is a trend that we have been dealing with since the beginning of the pandemic. planned investments, but the needs related to running current operations, and these in selected industries increased with the prospect of further restrictions related to the pandemic, and now due to the outbreak of the war in Ukraine or the worsening socio-economic situation as a result of rising inflation and subsequent interest rate increases, it was announced.
In the case of the other two indicators, the number of optimists decreased in the current measurement. 24% of entrepreneurs are counting on more orders (5.4 percentage points less than in Q1 2022), and 17% expect better financial liquidity (8.4 percentage points less than in Q1 2022), it was stated in the study.
The main EFL Barometer index for the second quarter of this year was 48.7 points and is only 0.2 points lower than in the previous quarter. It is the second reading this year ‘below the line’, i.e. below the threshold of 50 points, which indicates that Poor sentiment of Polish entrepreneurs persists. However, experts point out that the first measurement since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine is much higher than the one after the outbreak of the pandemic, which amounted to 32.5 points in the second quarter of 2020, according to the study.
The OR threshold is the level of limited development of companies from the SME sector, which is at least 50 points. in the EFL Barometer. It is an algorithm created on the basis of data collected during the survey of entrepreneurs concerning 4 spheres: sales level, planned investments in fixed assets, financial liquidity and demand for external financing. It assumes values from 0 to 100, and the aggregated result above 50 points means that there are favorable conditions for the development of the SME sector, while a lower result means that these conditions are unfavorable.
A representative group of 600 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises participated in the study. The current edition of the study was held from March 28 to April 14, 2022.
Source: EFL and ISBnews
