{"id":2280,"date":"2018-02-05T16:18:57","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T16:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2280"},"modified":"2018-02-05T16:18:59","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T16:18:59","slug":"business-confidence-on-the-rise-among-smes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/business-confidence-on-the-rise-among-smes\/","title":{"rendered":"Business confidence on the rise among SMEs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new study suggests that confidence among British small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) rose slightly at the beginning of 2018.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>According to new figures from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), business confidence rose notably in January, but remained in \u201cnegative territory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The group\u2019s latest UK Business Confidence Monitor (BCM) saw Britain\u2019s \u2018confidence index\u2019 rise from -3.4 to -1.0, suggesting \u201cmodest GDP growth in Q1,\u201d the ICAEW said.<\/p>\n<p>Its report also found that sales growth was \u201cdrifting gradually upwards\u201d and that investment in staff development was \u201cstarting to pick-up\u201d among SMEs at the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the report comes at a time when the Government is anticipating a gloomy outlook for the UK over coming months.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, official documents were leaked suggesting that Britain\u2019s economy would be adversely affected by the nation\u2019s upcoming departure from the European Union (EU).<\/p>\n<p>Since then, however, many economists have argued otherwise \u2013 with one influential think tank lifting its growth forecast for the UK on Monday (5 February).<\/p>\n<p>Its report revised the group\u2019s UK GDP estimate for 2018 to 1.7 per cent, up from the 1.4 per cent previously forecast towards the end of last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study suggests that confidence among British small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) rose slightly at the beginning of 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2281,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions\/2281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}