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Economic confidence up, closer to optimism
Confidence in the global economy has increased over the past three months, a poll by the World Economic Forum shows
The WEF's Economic Confidence Index rose to 0.48 during the first three months of the year from 0.43 in the previous quarter, much closer to the 0.5 value that would lift it in positive territory.
The result puts the index back in neutral territory for the first time since it fell into low-confidence territory in the third quarter of last year.
The survey polled 304 experts from government, international organizations, academia and business, asking them about their confidence in the state of the world over the next 12 months.
The confidence index is calculated by taking the average of five values from 0 to 1, with 0 corresponding to "not at all confident" and 1 to "very confident" about the state of the world.
"It looks as though the worst is over and experts are not too worried about a double-dip recession of the world economy, as a whole," Martina Gmür, senior director of the Forum’s Global Agenda Council, said in a statement.
"But, while the economic index has seen an improvement over three consecutive quarters and is now back at its peak from one year ago, it is worth remembering that, back then, the eurozone crisis was already in full swing; and the index has so far not crossed over into positive territory."
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Among the types of disruption that experts felt were "likely or very likely," geopolitical disruption was ranked first, with 51.6% of the responses, followed by economic disruption with 47.7% and societal disruption with 42.4%.
The first Global Confidence Index quarterly report was released in September 2011. Today's is the eighth successive release.
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