More SME business owners expect their performance to decline in the next 6 months

Less than two in 10 business owners (17%) expect it to worsen.

Amidst the slow economic growth, more small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) business owners are expecting their performance to worsen in the next six months.

According to the recent OCBC SME business outlook study, 17% expect a decline, higher than the 15% recorded last quarter.

Also revealed in the study is 47% of SME owners said they are expecting an improvement in business performance for the next two quarters. Four in 10 (37%) said they expect an unchanged business performance.

The study used the poll conducted in March 2023, looking into the views of 950 business owners.

SME index

The OCBC study also found that the building & construction, F&B, and services continued to register expansionary readings in 1Q 2023, but the overall SME index declined due to weakening growth from industries – transport & logistics, wholesale trade, and ICT.

The OCBC SME Index is likely to ease slightly moving in the second quarter of 2023.

“Although the economic outlook in the region has improved somewhat with the re-opening of China’s economy, the continued weakness in manufacturing and trade globally, with persistent inflation, is likely to slow the business momentum,” read the study.

Follow the link for more news on

OCBC Bank

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia