The quarterly Jersey Business Tendency Survey (BTS) provides timely, qualitative information about the Island’s economy.

Chief executives and managing directors are asked for their opinions on the current situation of their business compared to three months earlier and their expectations for the next three months.

In December 2017:

• the headline all-sector business activity indicator was +12 percentage points (pp); this means the proportion of businesses reporting an increase was 12 pp greater than those reporting a decrease
• the business activity indicator increased by 5 pp over the last three months
• six out of the eight current indicators were positive; only profitability and input costs were negative
• the new business and business optimism indicators were both positive and improved from last quarter
• the only indicator to change by 10 pp or more was the business optimism indicator; a quarter (27%) of companies said their sector was more optimistic, compared to 8% that were less optimistic
• the profitability indicator was strongly positive (+31 pp) for the finance sector, but negative for all other sectors, especially wholesale and retail, which had a strongly negative balance of  46 pp
• almost half (45%) of companies reported higher input costs, producing a strongly negative indicator of  42 pp; this was more pronounced for non-finance companies, where half (52%) saw higher costs
• the finance sector was significantly more positive than the non-finance sector in every indicator, and nine of the ten indicators were more than 20 pp higher for the finance sector

Future outlook:

• the outlook for future business activity was strongly positive, with the finance sector being much more positive than other sectors
• the future employment outlook was positive, and was also driven by the strongly positive finance sector, which had a balance of +57 pp, the highest recorded to date
• the finance sector was positive about future profits and employment, with four-fifths (82%) of companies expecting increased profits for 2018 and two-thirds (66%) expecting to increase employment; see the annex for more details