Business Survey Netherlands (COEN)
Every quarter year, the Conjunctuurenquête Nederland questions entrepreneurs on topics that concern them. Topics such as turnover developments, profitability, investments, and staff. Included are questions about experiences in the past quarter and expectations for the current quarter. The business confidence survey combines various of these topics to identify an overall sentiment. It is available for the whole of the Netherlands, all business sectors, regions, and company sizes.
4th quarter, 2024 - Business Confidence Indicator
Business confidence, the mood indicator of the Dutch business community, is negative for the twelfth quarter in a row. It comes in at -3.1 at the start of the 4th quarter of 2024, down from -3.4 in the 3rd quarter.
However, business confidence was less negative for the 4th consecutive quarter. Only in the business sectors Mining and quarrying, Transportation and storage, Renting, buying, selling real estate, and Business services, business confidence was positive. 7 of the 14 business sectors saw an increase in business confidence and the remaining 7 saw a decrease.
Business confidence increased from -3.4 to -3.1 in Q4 2024. Business confidence was relatively highest in Mining and quarrying (5.0), Transportation and storage (1.7) and Renting, buying, selling real estate(1.6). Entrepreneurs in Accommodation and food serving (-11.3), Agriculture, forestry and fishing (-9.7), and Manufacturing (-6.4) are relatively the most negative.
Expectations
On balance, entrepreneurs are positive about turnover (17.0%), sales prices/rates (16.3%), personnel (6.4%), and purchase orders (6.4%). On balance, entrepreneurs are negative about the economic climate (-1.9%) and investments (-0.1%).
Obstacles
38.5% of entrepreneurs experience labour shortages. Furthermore, insufficient demand (19.8%), weather conditions (6.4%), financial limitations (8.2%), shortage of production, materials and space (7.0%) or other reasons (9.2%) are obstacles. 33.9% experience no obstacles.
The different barriers now add up to more than 100 per cent. Entrepreneurs can enter a maximum of 2 answers for the obstacle question. Previously the total percentage was normalised to 100 %. This is now no longer done, so the percentage represents the proportion of entrepreneurs who chose this obstacle.
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