According to the latest Jersey Business Tendency Survey, which is produced every three months by the States Statistics Unit, input costs – the costs of production – were strongly negative (-57 percentage points) for the wholesale and retail sectors, meaning that costs were up overall.
Product prices, by contrast, were strongly positive (+51 pp), meaning that they had risen – a trend that those behind
the survey say indicates that the sector is passing on its higher costs to customers.
Across all sectors, 44 per cent of companies reported increasing input costs, and 24 per cent reported increasing the prices charged to customers – slightly less than reported three months ago.
Three-quarters of businesses reported that product prices were unchanged compared with the previous quarter.
An inflation rate of 2.5 per cent and price increases caused by Brexit, particularly with food, have both previously been blamed for pushing up prices.
Meanwhile, across all sectors business activity was up seven per cent. However, that is significantly lower than three months ago, when it was 25 pp.
Profits were down to -24 pp, 15 pp lower than June, with more than a third of non-finance companies reporting that profitability had decreased in the latest quarter. A total of 12 per cent reported it had increased, with just over half (53 per cent) reporting no change.
Most sectors also reported a fall in optimism, with overall business optimism falling from 15 pp in the last quarter to neutral.
The finance sector was generally more positive than the non-finance sector across most of the indicators used in the survey, which was sent to around 500 private firms and completed by 247 of them.
Profitability in finance was up on the last quarter to 23 pp, but dropped for the non-finance sector to -24 pp – the largest difference between the two for three years.
And looking to the future, finance firms were also described as ‘strongly optimistic’ about future business activity when compared with the non-finance sector, which was neutral.
