Mirroring the impact of the recent reforms initiated by the government to boost growth, CII Business Confidence Index, which had slipped below the psychological 50 level mark in the third-quarter of the current fiscal, rose to 51.3 in the final quarter. Welcoming the development, Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry, said that "Though the index has strengthened in the final quarter of the current fiscal, it is too early to assume that the slowdown has bottomed out and the green shoots of recovery have begun to emerge".

The 82nd Business Outlook Survey is based on the responses from 175 members. Majority of the respondents (53.0 per cent) belonged to large-scale firms, while 14.8 per cent were from medium-scale firms and 25.2 per cent and 7.0 per cent each were from small-scale and micro firms respectively. Further, 67.2 per cent of the respondents were from manufacturing sector while 31.0 per cent and 1.7 per cent were from services and primary sectors, respectively.

Majority of the respondents rated high levels of corruption, persisting inflation, threat to continuation of reform process, escalated interest rates and political uncertainty as the major concerns. Encouragingly, respondents did not perceive global economic/political uncertainty as a major worry at this moment.

Survey indicates that most of the respondents (43.5 per cent) expect GDP growth to come in a range of 5.0-5.5 per cent for 2012-13 as compared to the advance estimates of 5.0 per cent released by CSO recently. In an indication of improvement in economic growth in 2013-14, majority of the respondents expect GDP growth next year to conform to the official estimates of 6.1-6.7 per cent as forecasted in the Economic Survey.

However, "For matching up to the government growth estimates for the next fiscal, it is critical that we remain focused on introducing the critical reform measures. The Union Budget 2013-14 has indeed covered some distance in this direction, but more measures are warranted" stated Mr Banerjee.