Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    ONLY a quarter of Chinese chief executives feel “very confident” about their companies’ prospects for revenue growth over the next 12 months, 11 percentage points lower than a year earlier, an annual global CEO survey by PwC showed yesterday.

    It was the second year that Chinese CEOs’ confidence in growth slipped. Thirty-six percent of respondents said they were “very confident” in their companies’ growth prospects last year.

    More than 1,700 PwC staff members spent four months surveying 1,409 chief executives from around the globe, including 145 from China, and found that 34 percent of Chinese business persons are confident about their company’s growth prospects over the next three years, reflecting confidence in the country’s economy undergoing a major transformation.

    Executives in China will continue seeking investment opportunities and growth prospects globally, the survey found. The three countries (apart from China) that executives consider most important to their companies’ overall growth prospects over the next 12 months are the United States, followed by India and Cambodia.

    In 2015, 43 percent of executives in China identified the United States as the most important country for investment outside of their own. This year, the investment strategy seems to have shifted from a U.S.-centric model to a more diversified one that includes developing countries in Asia, particularly those participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, PwC said.