Opten: Company managers aren’t yet over the hard times

By: Trademagazin Date: 2024. 01. 19. 12:35

OPTEN and Bridge Budapest’s year-end business sentiment survey shows a mixed picture and mixed feelings. The mood survey of Jövőkép Mátrix at the end of 2023 suggests that company managers are aware that instead of short-term challenges, they have to deal with the longer-term course of the downturn, which requires strategic thinking. The good news is that the positive sentiment continues. The bad news is that its intensity is decreasing, company managers do not yet feel that they can breathe, and they are increasingly uncertain in the future. At the end of last year, more than 100 progressive domestic business owners and top managers who were interviewed rated their current situation at 6.6 points and 6.8 points on a scale of 10.

The service sector felt the best in December, narrowly edging out industry, which was in the lead in the previous quarter. Since the service sector saw the greatest potential for growth in the previous quarter, this seems to have been confirmed based on the current data – explains the data series Dr. Hajnalka Csorbai, OPTEN’s strategic director and head of the analysis, who also addresses the position of the construction industry separately.

According to the analyst, the construction industry has had a difficult year behind it, and this sector continues to struggle with the biggest challenges. In the construction industry, they feel like they are riding a roller coaster: company managers’ premonitions are negative, while slightly better realizations are registered, but true optimism still seems distant to the workers here. The question is, after the fatigue at the end of the year, what do the incoming macroeconomic and financial indicators show, and how much more optimistic will the trade sector, which usually ends the year strong, be more optimistic. For the time being, the following correlations emerge from the December data, which make it doubtful whether there will again be a distinctly more optimistic turn similar to last year, and whether the public mood will creep towards 7 points.