DAVOS (Switzerland), Jan 22 — Chief executive officers (CEO) around the world are more optimistic about global economic prospects, a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey shows.

Among 1,344 CEOs surveyed in 68 countries, 44 per cent are optimistic over global economic improvements over the next 12 months — twice the figure in the previous year.

In contrast, CEOs are less optimistic about their own business prospect, Xinhua news agency reported.

“CEOs are cautious about whether greater global growth will translate into growth for their own companies. They are coming out of survival mode, but the search for growth is getting increasingly complicated as the global economy gradually rebalances itself,” PwC said in a report.

Efforts made by governments to balance reform with growth was a common concern among CEOs, with an overwhelming majority of 72 per cent considering over-regulation as a main potential threat to their organisations’ growth prospect.

CEOs were not only worried about sluggish growth in advanced economies but also a slowdown in emerging economies, said the report.

In a rebalancing world, they believe that three transformative global trends including technological advances, demographic shifts and shift in global economic power would affect their business over the next five years.

It was also found that CEOs generally pinned their hopes for growth on innovation.

“Most also want to improve their companies’ ability to innovate: 86 per cent aim to alter their R&D functions, while 88 per cent are exploring better ways of using and managing big data and 90 per cent are changing their technology investments,” the report said.

The PwC unveiled the result of its 17th Annual Global CEO Survey in Davos, Switzerland a day before the annual World Economic Forum was due to open on January 22. — Bernama