Brasília – The National Confederation of Industry (CNI, in the Portuguese acronym) informed this Friday (21) that industrialists’ confidence in the economy and in their own companies remains low. The Industrial Businessman Confidence Index (Icei) stood at 52.5 points in March, against 52.4 points in February, down 4.6 percentage points from March 2013, when it stood at 57.1 points. The indicator ranges from 0 to 100 points and scores above 50 indicate confident entrepreneurs.
The CNI also informed that the Icei has been lower than the historical average, 58.1 points, for 13th months in a row. In large companies, however, confidence has grown by a higher rate, from 52.4 in February to 53.3 points in March. By region, only companies in the Southeast, at 49.7 points, show lack of confidence. The Icei survey was conducted between March 6th and 18th with 2,610 companies throughout the country, of which 981 are small-sized, 1,004 are average-sized and 625 are large-sized companies.
*Translated by Rodrigo Mendonça
