The latest NAB business confidence survey reported a slight increase in conditions, and a fall in confidence in February.

Mirroring CreditorWatch’s Business Risk Index data, confidence was lowest in the retail, construction, mining and food and beverage sectors. Food and beverage, construction and mining make up three of our top four industries for external administrations, and while retail trade is performing relatively well according to our own insolvency and payment default data, conditions in that sector are negative, so we expect some worsening insolvency trends in retail trade going forward.

In a worrying sign for future inflation data, final product and retail prices both increased over the month, suggesting businesses are still planning further price rises. Forward orders, however, are still trending down and are well below average, which means that while prices may rise slightly, businesses are preparing for consumers to be purchasing less, and for businesses to be ordering less.