this story originally appeared in on apr 30 2012 new delhi indias business confidence has improved from the previous quarter but concerns over stagnancy in reforms and rising cost of finance and raw materials remain a survey conducted by the confederation of indian industry shows the survey pegs the cii business confidence index for the first quarter of the current fiscal apriljune at 55 as against 529 in the last quarter of 201112 the reading however is lower than the 625 for the first quarter of the previous fiscal the 79th business outlook survey based on a sample size of 200 companies was released by cii on saturday although the index value is showing a moderate recovery for the past two quarters it remains at a depressed level and far below the levels achieved in the previous year said cii directorgeneral chandrajit banerjee the survey shows that over 40 of the respondents expect the gdp growth rate in the current fiscal to be between 7 and 75 while over 30 expect it to be higher more than a quarter of the respondents were optimistic that the inflation rate for the current fiscal would be below 7 after coming in at 88 for 201112 almost 50 of the respondents are looking at an increase in domestic investments in the current quarter of these 236 expect to increase investments by up to 10 161 by 1020 and 75 by more than 20 majority of the respondents also expect a rise in international investments in the current quarter capacity utilisation is likely to see an improvement as well over 58 of the companies surveyed expect it to be above 75 in the current quarter as against about 50 respondents whose actual capacity utilisation was above 75 in the fourth quarter of 201112