Verio-sponsored survey finds long-term optimism among world's small businesses

Small-business leaders worldwide remain optimistic about their long-term prospects despite the economic downturn, even though only 37 percent expect their companies to do better this year than last, according to a survey released Monday and sponsored by Verio Inc.

The survey, conducted in April, is by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the business-information arm of the Economist Group, publisher of the Economist. It surveyed 328 owners and executives of small- and mid-sized businesses around the world, with 29 percent of the respondents from North America.

According to the survey, 83 percent of small business executives are optimistic about their company???s long-term ability to rebound when the economy improves, 65 percent expect their company???s market share to have increased by the time the recession ends, and 73 percent expect revenues to have increased.

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Only 6 percent of the worldwide executives surveyed said they expect the quality of talent in their organizations to decrease once the economy improves; 38 percent expect it to increase.

Yet many of the business leaders surveyed say their governments are doing too little to support them through the worldwide downturn.

Forty-eight percent of those surveyed said local government is unsupportive of their business, and 39 percent say the same of national governments.

Asked to explain this lack of government support, small-business executives worldwide said smaller companies "do not attract enough attention" (39 percent), "the public at large perceives large companies as more important than small- and mid-size companies" (28 percent), and "small- and mid-size businesses have fewer advocates than large companies" (24 percent).

Centennial, Colo.-based Web-hosting company Verio is a unit of Tokyo-based NTT Communications Group.

Click here to download the survey results on PDF format.