The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry says its business confidence index dropped from 95 in August to 91.7 in September.
The Chamber said the BCI started 2012 with a 0.6 index points decline in the 1st quarter 2012, 2.6 points in the 2nd quarter and 1.5 points in the 3rd quarter of 2012 - a total loss of 4.7 points since the start of the year. With the BCI at 100 in 2010, the 91.7 in September 2012 remains a depressed level for local confidence.
Sacci CEO, Neren Rau, says the BCI was 6.7 index points below its level in September last year.
He says recent developments in the domestic labour market weighed heavily on the Business Confidence Index, with the impact of the recent Moody's downgrade expected to be felt later.
"The September BCI was largely driven by labour impact, first from mining incidents (Marikana shooting) and then later from the transportation sector and that remains a huge risk to the BCI in the next months of this year," he said.
"The downgrade came very late in September so its influence on the BCI would have been fairly muted. We expect to see a stronger impact as a result of the downgrade in the October BCI," he added.
