Business confidence up for Apr-Sept

India Inc has increased expectations and a greater confidence in the country's business environment in the first half of the fiscal, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry's Business Confidence Index (BCI) for the April-September period.

The index stood at 66.05 points, which is an improvement of 1.15 points over the previous six-month period between October 2003 and March 2004.

The CII-BCI is a part of the chamber's 61st Business Outlook Survey. Since its launch in March 2003, this is the third consecutive rise in the index.

The index is calculated as a weighted average of the current situation index (CSI) and the expectations index (EI). A 50-75 points upward swing of the index reflects an increase in the confidence in the industrial community.

The CSI, according to the survey, stood at 65.2 points and had shown a gain of 5 points over the previous period.

This means industry perceives the conditions to be better off now than six months ago. The index for the activity and own company sectors went up 3 and 5.3 points, respectively.

On the GDP growth, the report said 38 per cent of the respondents expected the GDP growth to be more than 7 per cent in 2004-05.

Nearly 28 per cent felt that the growth in the fiscal would be 6.5-7 per cent, while 20 per cent said the economy would grow 6-6.5%. Only 14 per cent of the respondents believed that the growth could be below 6 per cent.