Nearly half of manufacturers foresee economic deterioration in 2012

Date: Monday 16 Jan 2012

Manufacturers’ organization EEF’s 2012 Executive Survey report, published today, shows that just under a half of respondents expects economic conditions to deteriorate this year. Furthermore, unfortunately, this spread of views is shared by firms of all sizes and across all industry sectors. Thus, manufacturing companies are entering the new year with less optimism than in 2011 and with considerably more caution.

Nonetheless, many of the same trends that were seen in 2011 are expected to repeat themselves in 2012. Amongst these are companies’ focus on productivity and innovation across products, processes and services, as well as a focus on exporting to new markets. Likewise, firms may well again be hampered by difficulties in finding the right skills and the availability of inputs and raw materials.

As an aside, and of interest, the EEF's observation that while there is some ground that is still to be made up, some sectors such as transport, machinery and food are nearly operating at pre-recession levels of output.

AB

« Go back to news channel

Email this article to a friend

or share it with one of these popular networks:

• DIGG
• FACEBOOK
• STUMBLEUPON
• MIXX
• YAHOO BUZZ
• DELICIOUS
• REDDIT
• NEWSVINE