Top business leaders are less gloomy about the prospects for the global economy than last year, but they hardly are brimming with confidence for 2013, according to a major survey released on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
International chief executives are also less confident than last year about growth prospects for their own companies, according to the survey of 1,330 CEOs conducted by financial services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Only 28% of CEOs said they expected the global economy to decline further in 2013, against 48% last year, while 52% expected it to remain stable.
But only 36% said they were "very confident" in their company's growth prospects in the next 12 months, down from 40% last year and 48% in 2011.
"It's a little bit more positive than last year" in terms of predictions for the global economy, the chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers International, Dennis Nally, said at the release of the survey.
"CEOs are saying we're seeing another year where the economy is reluctant to recover," he said. "It's not all doom and gloom, but we see an economy that is struggling to get traction."
Despite steps to shore up faith in the eurozone, Western European business leaders were the most pessimistic among the surveyed CEOs, with just 22% saying they were very confident of growth, down from 27% last year.
North American, Asia Pacific and African CEOs also were less confident, but Latin American executives bucked the trend, with 53% expressing confidence in the short-term, up slightly from last year.
For individual countries, Russian executives were the most confident, with 66% saying they had high expectations of revenue growth.
Asked about their concrete concerns, topping the list was continued uncertainty over economic growth, with 81% of business leaders concerned.
Other top worries included fiscal deficits, "over-regulation," lack of stability on capital markets and "the increasing tax burden," PwC said.
The World Economic Forum is a global gathering of top political and business leaders at the Swiss ski resort of Davos that starts officially on Wednesday.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2013