THE impact of the global economic crisis on local businesses has been clearly illustrated in a survey released today.

More than three-quarters are less confident about the prospects for the island’s economy than they were 12 months ago.

Nearly half of those blame their lack of confidence on the slowdown.

But 30% of them blamed the States and government expenditure with unemployment, zero-10, tax, housing and tourism given as the other reasons.

A fifth have maintained the same confidence level as last year, with only 4% showing increased confidence.

This is the lowest level of confidence the survey carried out by Island Analysis for the Chamber of Commerce and Young Business Group has found in four years.

The good news is that more than half of businesses expect their 2009 turnover to at least equal that of last year.

But 41% expect it to decrease and all who took part say the future is unclear.

‘The forecast of profitability looks good for 2009. However, there’s an awful lot of uncertainty about the future and because of that companies are saying they are not spending money unnecessarily,’ said Chamber director Barry Cash (pictured).

He said that more than 100 businesses had participated, enough to get a meaningful response.

Chamber president Paul Luxon and his YBG counterpart, Tim Rawles, said that given economic turmoil, they felt it was imperative to publish the survey results as soon as possible.

n The full survey is available at www.guernseychamber.com from today.