The morale of the bosses of PME and TPE is maintained in spite of the crisis which strikes their activity. For a survey carried out at the end of April by BPI-France, Le Lab and Rexecode, more than 600 "little bosses" were interviewed, and these are more optimistic than expected.
If they bear the brunt of the economic crisis, they are nevertheless helped by the State. Thanks to the massive aid put in place by the government (partial unemployment, loans guaranteed by the State, deferral or even cancellation of charges), a majority of SMEs and very small businesses think they can overcome the crisis. This is in any case what appears on reading this survey conducted among 615 bosses of SMEs and VSEs distributed throughout France, and made public this Wednesday morning. Although the situation is a source of anxiety, there are still some reasons not to despair too much.
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4 in 10 bosses expect a rapid return to normal
Obviously, the violence of the economic shock is present. Four out of 10 SME bosses expect their annual turnover to fall by more than 30% this year. But what is striking in this poll is that they do not all see a chaotic recovery. Admittedly, 6 out of 10 think that it will take them time, once the containment measures are lifted, to find a semblance of activity, but the others (4 out of 10), on the other hand, expect a rapid return to normal (although this return to normal does not make them recover the turnover lost during the confinement period).
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Investment and hiring projects
This investigation reveals another rather surprising signal. In total, only 22% of the bosses questioned said they wanted to abandon the investment projects they had undertaken just before the start of the crisis, a third planning to maintain them, and 46% intending to simply reject them.
On the recruitment side, those who had hiring plans made almost the same responses: 36% wanted to keep them, 41% postponed them and only 23% gave them up.
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