Service Sector: Business Climate Indicator Declines

Optimism over the business outlook waned in the service sector. Despite a larger number of positive assessments of the current business situation, the climate indicator fell. There were fewer reports of an expected upturn in demand from the service providers surveyed and plans to implement price hikes were no longer as quite as common as last month. According to the survey results, staff numbers will continue to rise in the near future, although the upturn will no longer be as sharp as in recent months. This month’s capacity utilisation rate of 84.3% was one percent higher than last year’s figure. One in five companies reported a lack of skilled staff as a constraint on business activities.