Business confidence plummets to five-year low

Business confidence has dropped by a full 15 points over the past year to reach its lowest level in five years, the latest Rand Merchant Bank (RMB)/Bureau for Economic Research (BER) Business Confidence Index (BCI) has shown. After falling from 43 to 38 in the third quarter, it fell by a further two points to 36 in the final quarter of the year, which Investec economist Annabel Bishop warned was concomitant with an economy still at risk of very weak growth, if not recession.