Business confidence in South Africa remained depressed in November, weighed down by the high level of strike action in the country, the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) reported on Thursday.

The organisation’s Business Confidence Index for November fell marginally to 91.7 points, from 92 points in October and was 5.7 points below last year’s November level.

Sacci CEO Neren Rau said at a media briefing that strikes were one of the top three pervasive aspects that were holding down the BCI.

The chamber conducted a survey in late October of 52 businesses representing at least 830 employees, which found a direct correlation between a high level of unionisation in a firm and the frequency of strikes that the company experienced.

Over the past year, labour action was particularly rife in the construction, general government services, transport and communication, agricultural, mining and manufacturing sectors.

The study found that businesses with zero unionisation levels had a 55.6% probability of not experiencing a strike in the past three years and a 22.2% chance of a single strike occurring over the same period.

Firms with near-universal unionisation levels had a 66.7% chance that a strike would occur every year for the past three years.

Rau pointed out that, interestingly, the survey also showed that general strike activity in the economy were more harmful to companies than a strike within the business, suggesting that businesses were better able to plan for their own strikes than a general strike.

Industrial action over the past year had resulted in a temporary decrease in output in more than 40% of firms surveyed, with over 30% of firms reporting that it permanently increased the cost of doing business.

Almost 10% of firms surveyed pointed to a permanent reduction in output or services delivered to clients. This is especially evident of the impact of the industrial action over the last year.

“It is up to labour unions to move away from a knee-jerk strike reaction towards a more cooperative and sustainable relationship with business,” Rau urged.

Meanwhile, negative contributions to business confidence on a monthly and a yearly basis were evident in manufacturing, retail and construction activity, but this was somewhat offset by new vehicle sales, real financing costs and the stock markets.

With ten of the thirteen subindices being either negative or undecided between its monthly and yearly performance, the BCI remained under pressure and biased towards the negative.

Adding to pressure on South Africa’s business environment was its inconducive policy environment, as well as locally and globally weak economic performance, which was causing reservations in investor confidence.

Sacci economist Richard Downing forecast South Africa’s economic growth to be 2.4% for 2012 and to decline somewhat to 2.3% in 2013, adding that consumers would remain in a difficult situation until the economy started growing at a rate of about 3.5% to 4%.

“Unless the US and global markets pull us out of this and correct our position on our current account, our current account might provide us with a real difficult situation if we do not become more competitive,” he said.

In its latest Quarterly Bulletin released on Thursday, the South African Reserve Bank said the third-quarter current account gap was unchanged at 6.4% of gross domestic product.

Downing stated that 2012’s BCI would average around the low nineties, significantly down from last year’s average of 100.4 points.

He added that the December BCI figure would also not look much different from the current numbers, but that this depended on the outcomes of the ruling party’s fifty second national conference, which gets under way in the Free State on December 16.

“What policy positions they take and the consistency of that are important issues that could impact on business confidence. Assuming we receive some positive news from Mangaung, especially on policy issues and proper coordination of policies, we [BCI for December] can move up to about 95, so that will help our internal businesses, especially investor confidence, because the world economy will not afford the gap to do much better than that,” Downing indicated.

Rau warned that, should negative policy changes emerge from the Mangaung meeting, the BCI could edge to below 90. He, however, reiterated that the country’s business confidence was heading to a level where it was unlikely to move down.

“A lot of negative pressure would be needed to see it reach 88 or 87,” Rau noted.