Top CEOs have an ever-so-slightly rosier economic outlook than they did last quarter, according to a new survey.
Expectations for better sales inched up but the outlook remained the same for capital spending, and employment over the next six months.
“The economy will behave much as it is behaving now. It is not the robust growth that we would like, but a slower steady growth,” said Harold McGraw III, chairman of Business Roundtable, which surveyed 105 of its 160 member companies from Nov. 5 to Nov. 20. The Roundtable members are CEOs of major companies representing a combined work force of more than 10 million employees and $4.5 trillion in annual revenues.
About 70 percent said they anticipated increased sales, a number two points higher than last quarter’s forecast. Seventeen percent said sales would remain the same, compared with 20 percent last quarter.
The optimism is driven by international economic growth of about 4.9 percent, compared with U.S. growth of 2.5 percent. Developing countries are fueling this, and U.S. executives have a “much broader view from a much broader horizon,” said McGraw in a conference call.
Energy supplies were an increasing source of worry with 32 percent of chief executive officers listing energy prices as their greatest cost pressure — only half had cited energy prices as a concern in 2006. This was the first time that concern about energy prices was as high as that over health care costs.
