INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A quarterly business confidence index put out by economic think tank National Council for Applied Economic Research -- N-BCI -- dropped by
over 30% in the last quarter of the previous fiscal year, it said on Friday.
The N-BCI fell to 77.3 from 111.2 in the third quarter, and the
lowest since 1998 when business sentiment was low due to the Asian financial crisis.
This was its 112th survey round conducted in
March.
According to the report, sentiment was already lower by the third quarter, but dropped significantly in March during the time when
showed that business sentiments took a turn for the worse during the fourth and fifth weeks of March, coinciding with the announcement of
decline in sentiment across the board from the 600 companies it tracks.
Expectations were low in micro and macro factors, across sectors,
regions and across large, medium and small firms.
The survey consists of four questions, two on macro and the other two on micro sentiments,
11.6 percentage points, respectively.
