World News ‘More worried’: Latest NAB survey shows growing concerns among businesses about Australia’s economy Blog

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Australian businesses are increasingly concerned about the economic outlook as future indicators in a new survey by the National Australia Bank showed a slowdown.

The bank’s latest quarterly business survey on Thursday showed that business expectations declined on both the three-month and 12-month horizons, while the order books index fell further into negative territory.

Capacity utilization declined slightly in the second quarter to 83.6 percent (83.9 percent in the previous quarter), but investment plans remained largely unchanged.

“Economic indicators in the business survey continued to weaken this quarter,” said NAB chief economist Alan Oster.

“Expectations about future business conditions have declined. This suggests that companies are increasingly concerned about the economic outlook, even though we have so far managed to avoid a recession.”

NAB also announced that employment expectations for the next three months fell slightly, while expectations for the next 12 months eased. The proportion of businesses citing labour availability as a constraint remained broadly stable at 79 per cent.

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