Australian CFO optimism continues to bounce back from the COVID-induced shocks of 2020, with over 80% of the country’s senior finance executives feeling optimistic about the prospects for their company over the next 12 months.
According to the latest edition of Deloitte’s biannual CFO Sentiment survey, confidence overall is down slightly compared to six months ago, but nearly 25% of CFOs are still feeling highly optimistic as they look to emerge from the COVID-related challenges of the last two years.
Key findings (with the survey conducted in earlier stages of the spread of COVID’s Omicron variant) include:
Deloitte partner, and CFO Program leader, Stephen Gustafson, said: “In August last year we said that, in the midst of this global pandemic and such uncertain times, positive levels of CFO sentiment, and resilience generally, were really encouraging. Pleasingly, this remains the case.
“Australia might be off to a shaky Omicron-induced start to 2022, meaning uncertainty remains a challenge for all of us, and, perhaps not surprising, nearly all CFOs surveyed believe uncertainty levels are higher than normal.
“But against this backdrop, there’s next to no pessimism around. The fact that nearly 25% of our CFOs are highly optimistic and 58% are optimistic, is such a positive result when the global economic downturn of 2020 caused by COVID hit CFO optimism hard.”