Introduction
 

Business confidence is a useful indicator of expected economic trends in the short to medium term. Business confidence is determined in most cases via a structured survey and published on a monthly or quarterly basis. However this seems not to be feasible at a local economic level simply because of the costs involved and the time needed to get sufficient responses. From experience the most optimistic frequency to conduct such surveys seems to be yearly and the best route to conduct the surveys seems to be via the local chamber of business and other local business organizations. The survey is an online anonymous business survey designed specifically to generate data and information on a number of local economic characteristics and trends, and the general level of business confidence in the particular local economy. The surveys have been conducted by me.  

It is important to note that the surveys are conducted at the same time each year, i.e., March and April of each year in order to ensure consistency. The survey as mentioned is conducted using the World Wide Web (web) through a survey company located in Cape Town. Once the questionnaire has been finalized it is then given to this company to upload on the web and a web address or link is generated. Although the questionnaire is reviewed every year, very little change has been made since 2005, again to ensure consistency. The web link is then sending to the various chambers of business and other business organizations so that they can then distribute the web link to all their members. After two months the survey is closed and the data is collated by the web-based software that underpins the survey and a report and excel database is generated.

In general the response rate is between 1 percent and 2 percent of the total membership of the various chambers of business and business organizations. However there can be questions about the number of responses and thus its level of inference.  This is not an ideal situation and therefore needs further work.

Click below link to download Provincial Business Survey:
Provincial Business Survey 2013.pdf - 0.2 Mb