Irish CEOs optimistic about economy’s growth this year
Three quarters of Irish CEOs expect economic growth to pick up in the coming year, according to the latest CEO Survey from PwC.
That compares to 50% of Irish CEOs last year, and is a significant improvement on the 2020 low of 16%.
Almost two thirds of business leaders here also expect the global economy to improve in the coming year – making them more optimstic than the global average.
“Irish CEOs have proven to be extremely resilient,” said David McGee, ESG leader at PwC Ireland. “They’ve taken Brexit, global pandemics and they just keep picking up.”
The survey was conducted in the lead up to the US Presidential election – with just some of the responses gathered after Donald Trump’s win. However Mr McGee does not think the result would be hugely different if conducted today.
“People don’t like uncertainty, and there’s a lot of uncertainty around,” he said. “But I think people would have been pricing [a Trump win] in to their responses and looking at the election closely in that time.”
Despite that optimism, less than half of CEOs foresee them increasing staffing levels over the next 12 months – with some predicting a fall in headcount.
Part of that is down to an increased focus on generative artificial intelligence.
There were mixed views among Irish CEOs on the tangible benefits the technology had brought them so far, but despite this half of respondents expect it to increase revenue in the coming year.
“Looking back over the last 12 months, just under half said they could see some efficiency gains in their organisation,” he said. “When they look out over the next three years, they think it will be systemically embedded in everything they do and it will start driving revenue, cost and profit improvement.”
The PwC survey also finds that fewer CEOs here see climate change as a major risk. 76% are concerned about it, down 20 percentage points in three years.
This is in part a result of companies failing to see a benefit from previous green investments.
Just 31% said sustainability investments had increased revenue in the past five years. Meanwhile only one in ten said it had cut costs, with half saying they had actually increased costs.
“When you scratch under the survey data, they were finding it hard to make their climate investments pay off at the same levels,” he said. “People are saying ‘no, I need to get the same economic return [from green investments] – I’m not prepared to discount for that.
“Also they cite a lot of the regulatory complexity and the challenge of trying to figure out what’s the right thing to do here – even more difficult in the current level of complexity.”
Article Source – Irish CEOs optimistic about economy’s growth this year – PwC survey – RTE
