Methodology: Business Confidence and Performance Index

This report is based on a quarterly survey conducted among IMA’s India CEO and CFO Forum members, typically attracting 150+ responses.

Respondents are asked to indicate:

• Their outlook on current and future (3 months from today) macroeconomic conditions
• Business performance on 5 parameters (sales, confirmed new orders, net profit, net hiring and capacity utilisation) in the most recent quarter and one quarter ahead on an ‘Up’, ‘Down’ and ‘Same’ scale
• Whether or not they have made/will make new capital expenditures in a specific quarter
• Spending on the ‘soft things’: advertising and marketing; team/morale building exercises (offsites, company parties, etc); and aggregate travel expenditure

The ‘headline’ (overall) BCPI is a weighted average of current conditions (40%) and expected future conditions (60%). In turn, each of these is a composite of:

• Macroeconomic conditions (25%)
• Business performance (60%) on the 5 parameters noted above
• New investments (15%)

Index values can range between 0 and 100:

• Values above 50 indicate a net positive outlook on a particular parameter (more respondents say ‘Up’ than ‘Down’)
• Readings below 50 suggest a net-negative view (more say ‘Down’ than ‘Up’)
• Hypothetically, a value of 100 would suggest that every respondent has a positive outlook, while a value of 0 would indicate the opposite

The ‘Net Score’ for each business performance parameter is the difference between the gains and the deficits expected by the respondents in FY26 Q2