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Johannesburg - Business confidence remains fragile, despite a 1.9 index point gain last month, the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) said on Thursday.
The Business Confidence Index (BCI) was negatively affected through all nine sub-indices.
This was offset by an exceptional number of new vehicle sales in April, said Sacci CEO Neren Rau.
The monthly improvement in the rand's weighted exchange rate also contributed to securing the slight BCI gain on March.
The BCI for April was still two index points lower than in the same month last year.
"Sacci is concerned that the slowdown in merchandise export volumes is weighing negatively on the BCI on both a monthly and an annual basis," Rau said.
Two financial BCI sub-indices were positive and one was neutral in April, compared to two neutral and one positive for the previous month.
"The financial environment sub-indices were more restrained than a year ago, and may now begin to weigh more strongly on an already stressed domestic economy."
The predicted import volume growth of emerging and developing economies was about three percent higher than that forecast for advanced economies for 2013 and 2014.
Rau said that while South Africa could benefit from greater exports to other developing countries, a weaker rand should not be expected to offset potentially adverse competitive impacts on domestic economic inputs.
Declining hard commodity prices and weaker trade terms for developing and emerging economies gave an indication that the export of manufactured goods would need to be emphasised.
An international market share in manufactured goods would need to be earned, in the same way that South African vehicle exporters achieved their global market share, he said.
