Agents' Summary of Business Conditions - September 2013

• Overall, the recovery in demand and output growth had strengthened a little further.
• Early feedback from contacts about forward guidance had been broadly positive, with a number of contacts indicating an increase in confidence that interest rates would remain low, providing some support to the recovery.
• Annual growth in consumer spending had increased, in part due to a period of good weather, but with underlying consumer confidence also reported to have risen.
• Activity in the housing market had continued to rise.
• Investment intentions had edged higher, though continued to point to modest growth in capital spending overall.
• Growth in manufacturing output had edged up a little, both for the domestic market and for export.
• Business services turnover growth had picked up, largely due to increasing activity within professional and financial services.
• Construction output had continued to strengthen as house-building activity rose.
• Corporate credit availability had been little changed.
• Employment intentions pointed to a slight increase in staffing over the coming six months.
• Capacity utilisation was expected to increase slightly in coming months, though a margin of spare capacity remained.
• The annual rate of growth in labour costs per employee had been broadly unchanged.
• Annual growth in materials costs had remained subdued and moderate inflation in imported finished goods prices had continued.
• Inflation in manufacturers’ output prices and business services prices remained muted.
• Consumer price inflation had remained moderate.

Agents' summary of business conditions - September 2013

• Agents' scores (xlsx)
• Definitions for the Agents’ scores
• Response to consultation on changes to Agents' scores