Australian firms face higher costs of doing business

More than half of companies (57%) experienced an increase in the cost of doing business over the three months to April 2022, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Of firms which experienced an increase in cost, some 21% stated that costs had increased to “a great extent”, according to the ABS press release.

This is in line with the results from March, where most of the businesses had seen increases in the costs of fuel or energy (83%) and the costs of products or services used (82%).

“More than half of the businesses with higher costs (52%) did not increase their prices. For those that did increase prices, 42% had partially passed on costs and 6% had fully passed on the increases to customers,” said ABS Head of Industry Statistic, John Shepherd.

Responding to increased business costs, “over a third (39%) of businesses had made changes to their operations or processes and 17% had renegotiated payment terms with customers and suppliers,” said Shepherd.

In line with findings, this January, 18% of businesses were also found to have insufficient staff in April 2022, data showed.

Source: GWFM News