Despite witnessing a slight drop of 1.4 per cent in business investment confidence, India maintained the highest year-on-year confidence growth among 32 economies surveyed in Q3 2025, with a robust 12.6 per cent rise, according to the D&B Global Business Investment Confidence Index of Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), a data and analytics firm.
According to the report, the Global Business Investment Confidence Index fell 13.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter (q/q) for Q3 2025, the third consecutive quarter of contraction. The drop in confidence is broad-based, with businesses reporting sharp declines in all five sub-indices, compared with Q2 2025, when only the amount of capital expenditure and the size of the workforce were expected to decline.
The report highlights that nearly half of businesses (46.8 per cent) reported supply chain stability as very important to determining investments for Q3 2025, while tariff uncertainty was the lowest rated determining factor, similar to domestic interest rates. This aligns with the findings reported earlier in this report; the Global Supply Chain Continuity Index is the lowest of all our indices, at 99.9 for Q3.
In the global scenario, the investment confidence fell more in advanced economies than in emerging economies. Even after excluding the U.S., which has the largest weight and fell 16.7 per cent q/q, confidence in advanced economies fell more than in emerging economies. France, Japan, Germany, and Spain recorded the largest falls in advanced economies, reversing improvements made in Q2.
Among emerging economies, the largest q/q falls were recorded by the Russian Federation (-26.1 per cent), Brazil (-23.9 per cent), and South Africa (-20.7 per cent). The Central Bank of Brazil has aggressively increased the Selic rate by 425bps since last year, heavily dampening capital expenditure plans. The U.S. is South Africa’s third-largest market for automobile exports, so businesses in South Africa are greatly exposed to 25 per cent tariffs.
The manufacturing sector recorded a larger drop (-17.2 per cent) in investment confidence than the services sector (-10.8 per cent) for Q3 2025. The biggest declines were the manufacturers of capital goods (-33.1 per cent), food (-26.9 per cent), and automotives (-26.4 per cent). Of the manufacturing sub-sectors, the manufacturing of chemicals reported the smallest drop in confidence, of -14.8 per cent, albeit still a significant decline. This may reflect the exemptions to new U.S. tariffs, particularly those related to pharmaceutical products.
Positively, for Q3 2025, businesses reported an expected capacity utilisation of 68.9 per cent for the services sector and 69.3 per cent for the manufacturing sector, the first q/q increase since Q1 2024, according to the report. “Though this is a positive signal for future capital expenditure, the level remains below the 2024 averages of 73.9% and 74.1% for services and manufacturing, respectively,” the report added.
