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Yorks economy is 'on the way back up'
YORKSHIRE is on the road to economic recovery, according to compilers of a "league table" of prospects for the region.
Members of ICAEW – the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales – ranked the county as the country's "fourth most confident region" in their UK Business Confidence Monitor.
Interviews with business professionals in the first few months of 2010 gave the region a "confidence score" of 27.9 – up 14.4 points on the end of 2009 – and the highest ever Confidence Index Score.
The figure compares with a national score of 25.8 for this latest quarter.
ICAEW Regional Director for Yorkshire and Humber, Chris Manners, said "Yorkshire and Humber is starting to look as if it might be back in business, with quite strong growth expected in terms of indicators like turnover, gross profits, and sales.
"But we have to temper this with the reality that there is still a long way to go. More businesses can fail, even during an upswing, and Yorkshire is one of the worst UK regions at the moment for boarded-up shop fronts, even in our major cites."
The study said that turnover is forecast to grow by 4.1 per cent in 2010, compared to a decline of 2.9 per cent in the last year and gross profits are expected to grow by 3.7 per cent up from a forecast of 2.9 per cent at the end of 2009.
Sales volumes are expected to be 4.1 per cent higher in the next 12 months after shrinking by 3.2 per cent over the year to date.
Despite job losses in 2009, there are some indications of a very slight upturn with the number of employees expected to grow by one per cent.
The ICAEW, which has 132,000 members in over 60 countries, first launched the device for measuring growth in 2003.
Nationally, the statistics show that over half of senior business professionals are now more confident about economic prospects facing their organisation in the next year.
Around a thousand Chartered Accountants responded to a telephone survey during the period from October 28 2009 to January 21 2010, including 80 in Yorkshire and Humber.
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