FIDI Business Confidence Barometer - Q1 2021 results

At the end of 2019, FIDI launched the "Global Business Confidence Barometer" project. The barometer measures actual business results with the optimism or pessimism that Affiliates have on the prospects of economic and business conditions. Essentially, business or economic sentiment shows the optimism that business managers have on the prospects of economic conditions in a particular industry. It also presents an overview of how people foresee the business to develop in the coming months. The overall results present an overview of how business is evolving year on year in the FIDI space.

The first edition of the barometer was published at the beginning of 2021, looking into data of a full year. After a strong dip in confidence due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the trendline showed some very promising signs of a return of better times ahead, with the overall confidence showing signs of an upturn by the end of 2020.

The following parameters are measured by the FIDI Global Business Confidence Barometer to arrive at an overall entrepreneurial confidence score:

• Change in revenue
• Change in prices
• Change in office staff
• Change in crew and warehouse staff

Each time the effective increase or decrease of each parameter is measured against the same quarter last year, as well as the anticipated evolution in the next quarter, compared to the same period the previous year – thus comparing like for like, which is important in our seasonal business.
The results are scored as positive minus negative responses, which is the net balance, for each of the parameters. In the end, the various parameters are averaged in an overall score or net balance.

A balance above zero reflects increasing business confidence, and lower than zero indicates falling confidence. A positive outlook can be regarded as healthy for the near term economic expectations, while a negative outlook could be a forewarning of a downturn in the economy for movers.

The overall indicators all show a return of a positive outlook in 2021, with indicators for all categories bar office and operational staff reaching higher scores than in Q4 of 2019.

The full 2021 FIDI Business Confidence Barometer will be published at the beginning of 2022, once all the data for the full calendar year has been collected and analyzed. The survey for Q2 of 2021 will be sent out to participating FIDI Affiliates soon. If you would like to participate or have any questions or comments, please contact the FIDI Membership department at fidi@fidi.org