With continued global economic uncertainty, large Hungarian firms' optimism concerning the coming six-month period was scaled back in March, while the outlook of small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs) remained stagnant, according to the latest business confidence survey of state-owned research group Ecostat.
Among the Top-100 firms, the confidence index declined two percentage points to 52 per cent, resuming the declining trend of the past months following a four per cent pickup in February. Hungary's growth prospects are limited, due primarily to uncertainties regarding the war in Iraq but also the delayed upturn in the global economy. Large businesses expect the outlook for their own businesses to improve modestly in 2003, and see a good chance that in the last quarter, production and exports will take the place of domestic consumption and communal investments as the drivers of growth.
