Report: Rising taxes may cause business service companies to have less optimistic outlook

 Rising payroll or benefit taxes and the challenges of finding the right employees are causing companies in the industry to have a less optimistic outlook for the coming year, while a lack of predictability may impact the number of investors, reveals a report by the Association of Business Service Leaders (ABSL), conducted together with PwC consulting company.According to the source, the majority of companies in the industry (77%) have seen an increase in the number of customers and services delivered, while the increase in the number of employees has been 10% over the last two years.The report also shows that only 64% of industry companies expect turnover to grow this year, compared to 70% last year, and 33% of companies expect turnover to be similar to last year, compared to 25% in the 2022 report.Human resources and their availability continue to be the biggest challenge for the sector, with growth prospects also cautious in this direction. The ABSL report estimates 10% growth for the next two years.Industry companies increased wages in 2023 by an average of 9% and estimate 7% growth in 2024.According to the report, with an average gross salary of 11,637 lei, the business services industry remains the industry with the highest average basic salary. This industry was in the top 3 in 2022 in terms of wage growth, with 11% (after insurance and retail).Compared to previous years, the number of temporary employees (freelancing, consultants) increased 50%. This year, 46% of companies had such collaborations for services such as IT and technology, finance, procurement and customer operations.At the same time, the number of companies employing expatriates went up 27% compared to last year. Companies chose to hire staff from other countries for services provided in lesser-used foreign languages (59% of cases), as well as due to a lack of human resources in the country (44% of cases).The latest data shows that the revenue generated by the industry for business was 9 billion euro. Also, the contribution of this sector to the GDP in Romania is higher than the European average in recent years.