WESTERN Australian business leaders are expecting increases in sales, profitability, fixed investment and recruitment, according to the latest TEC Confidence Index. The results of the index, held quarterly by chief executive officer membership organisation The Executive Connection, revealed 92 per cent of WA CEOs anticipate an increase in projected sales revenues. Nationally, the confidence in projected sales revenues was 76 per cent, 16 percentage points lower than the figure for WA. Of the state’s CEOs who responded to the index, 77 per cent believed their firm’s profitability would improve during the next 12 months compared with 62 per cent nationally. Although nationally the expectation in the Australian dollar is much greater, CEOs in WA are not of the same mind, with just 8 per cent seeing it gaining strength as opposed to the 24 per cent national average. The biggest issue for managing training for those CEOs in WA who responded to the index is return on invest-ment (38 per cent) rather than time cost, which was the biggest issue nationally among 42 per cent of the CEOs. In regards to training, WA proved the exception to the benefits of training with more than half of CEOs considering 21 to 50 per cent of training wasted, compared with national figures where the majority of CEOs consider less than 20 per cent of training is wasted. The 2nd quarter 2006 TEC Confidence Index questions were completed by 172 of TEC’s chief executive members.
