Business Conditions and Sentiments survey published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics today. The main pints:
- Over a third of all businesses (38%) expect to increase their prices by more than usual. This was similar to March 2022 (39%).
- Nearly half (48%) of all businesses have no plans to increase their price of goods or services over the next three months.
- Almost one in five businesses (18%) have planned capital expenditure over the next 3 months.
Firms expecting to increase prices cited:
- Of the 38% of businesses that expect to increase their prices, the majority indicated increases to the costs of products or services used by the business (92%) and rising fuel or energy prices (78%) were the main contributing factors.
Firms not expecting to increase prices, on the other hand, appear to externally constrained from doing sing so:
- Of the 48% of businesses that expect no increase to their prices, almost half indicated that the reason for not increasing prices were to retain customers (46%) and having fixed price contracts (46%).
More inflation in the pipeline ahead. This'll keep RBA rate hikes on the boil.
