Small businesses in the UK have suffered the largest quarterly rise in costs since the data measure was first introduced in 2005 according to the Business Inflation Guide (BIG), a quarterly measure of small business inflation, created by MORE TH>N BUSINESS in collaboration with Warwick Business School.The latest statistics revealed a sharp increase in inflation of 2.7% between January and March 2010, adding to the misery of the previous three quarters of 2009 for small businesses.
According to the BIG, much of the increase revolves around vehicle maintenance costs with the largest price rise of 7.5%, while fuel costs are 6% higher and things like everyday office equipment and furniture are almost 6% higher.
The guide highlighted manufacturing companies as being the worst hit by the price hikes, with costs increasing by nearly 3% between January and March, and 7.6% over the past year.
Forecasts for slower economic growth than originally predicted and these cost increases will undoubtedly test cash reserves for small businesses.
The likelihood of banks stepping in with loan assistance is also looking distinctly unlikely despite government pressure to increase lending.
Tags: Business, Enterprise Finance Guarantee, Small Business
This entry was posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 8:11 am and is filed under News, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Print Page
Share Page
We set up this blog because our job at Riskdisk is to do everything we can
to help you make better credit decisions. Most of the time that means
helping business people use our credit checking product, but we also
find time to blog about credit news and the other issues that affect
our customers.
