The Global Economic Conditions Survey (GECS), carried out jointly by ACCA and IMA, is the largest regular economic survey of accountants in the world, in terms of both the number of respondents and the range of economic variables it monitors. Its main indices are good predictors of GDP growth in the OECD countries and daily trend deviations correlate well with the VIX or ‘fear’ index, which measures expected stock price volatility.
This is the 22nd edition of the survey, and the 11th since ACCA and IMA first joined forces to conduct this research. Over the years, GECS has been covered in the international, national and local press about 6,500 times, and its combined dataset now includes more than 41,000 responses. A review of the first five years of the survey, Five Years of the Global Economic Recovery, was published by ACCA and IMA in July 2014.1
Fieldwork for the Q2 2014 GECS took place between 29 May and 25 June 2014, and attracted just under 1,100 responses from ACCA and IMA members around the world; 430 of those were senior finance professionals, including 86 CFOs.
As always, ACCA and IMA are deeply grateful to all members who gave up their time to respond to the survey. Finance professionals have front-row seats to the recovery, and it is their first-hand accounts of business conditions on the ground that make the GECS a trusted barometer for the global economy.