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The latest official statistics suggest that the Island's economy is continuing to strength - but there remain serious worries over profits, and the cost of doing business here, particularly in companies outside of the finance sector.
The stats have been published by the States, for the period up to December 2016.
Generally, the report suggest that business confidence has returned to the same level as the previous year, before the Brexit decision and the election of Donald Trump.
In the critical finance sector, 46% of respondents said that there business activity had increased in the last three months, and 41% reported an increase in new business enquiries.
However, there were warning signs too, with 25% saying employment was falling, 18% saying that their input costs had gone up again, and 9% said their profitability was going down.
Outside of finance, the worries about higher costs were even more marked, with 57% of respondents reporting that they were going up, and 35% warning that profitability was falling:
In their supporting notes, the Statistics Unit commented:
"Business optimism was essentially neutral at +1 pp for the non-finance sector overall. This was comprised of positive business optimism for the construction sector (+20 pp) being offset by negative and neutral balances for wholesale and retail and the other non-finance sectors (-8 pp and 0 pp, respectively)."
You can read the full report for December 16 here.
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