A survey carried out by company DHL and the CzechTrade agency has shown that Czech exporters are this year much more optimistic in their expectations of future exports than in 2008 when they started to tackle the economic crisis and a drop in demand on foreign markets.

Survey showed that around 41% of export companies expect a growth in exports in the next 12 months as compared with 37% last autumn. However, the number of export companies that expect their sales abroad to rise is lower than in 2006 when 52% of exporters reckoned with higher exports.

A total of 9% of the survey's respondents think that the volume of their exports will fall in the next 12 months, which is a drop compared with last year when 17% of export firms expected lower exports. In 2007, only 3% of companies gave this answer.

Almost two fifths of respondents think that the volume of their exports will not change in the next 12 months compared with around one third in autumn 2008, which was the same share as in autumn 2007.

A total of 17% of export companies raised the volume of exports in the past 12 months as compared with 35% last year, 32% of firms registered no change in the volume of exports compared with last year's 35% and 48% of exporters saw a drop in exports as compared with 28% in autumn 2008.

Mr Jiri Grund chairman of Czech Exporters' Association said that the results of this year's export survey are more optimistic than he originally expected. He added that "I think we are out of the woods."

Almost a half of respondents think that the economic crisis will last for six to 12 months. One fifth of the respondents predict that the length of the crisis will range from two to 24 months and one tenth of them expect it to last from three to six months. Only 9% of respondents estimate that the crisis will last more than 24 months and 5% of them think that the crisis will end within three months.

(Sourced from Czech News Agency)