Costs up, profits down - worrying stats from Jersey businesses

Thursday 04 May 2017

Worrying signs about the rising cost of doing business in Jersey have emerged from the latest set of official stats on the health of the Island's companies.

The latest States 'business tendency survey' shows that 56% of respondents felt their cost of doing business here was going up. Outside of the finance sector, the same percentage was even higher at 64%, the first time such a large number have said that since 2011. At the same time, a third of companies said their profits were falling.

Just focussing on the critical finance sector, it was a similar story, with 34% reporting higher input costs, and 22% reporting falling profitability. But more positively, the indicators for employment, business optimism and business activity were all up on the previous quarter. 28% of companies all said they expected to employ more people in the next quarter:

For the non-finance sectors, while there were some positive signs, it was the rising costs of trading which will be of concern, with 62% of respondents saying these costs had gone up in the large quarter: