Overall business confidence of Hong Kong's small and medium-sized enterprises has become more conservative.

On January 23, Jinshi data reported that the Hong Kong Productivity Council announced the "Standard Chartered Hong Kong SME Leading Business Index" for the first quarter of 2025, which showed that the comprehensive business index of Hong Kong in the first quarter fell by 2.9 to 42.8 compared to the previous quarter, falling back to the level of the third quarter of 2024, reflecting the overall business confidence of local SMEs turning conservative under the uncertain global economic outlook. Liu Jianheng, senior economist of Standard Chartered Hong Kong Greater China, said that the "Standard Chartered Hong Kong SME Leading Business Index" for the first quarter of 2025 has almost given back the increase in the fourth quarter of last year, reflecting that the business confidence of SMEs is still cautious. He pointed out that the uncertainty brought by the US tariff policy after Trump took office, as well as the market's expectation of a reduction in the scale of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, the index fell slightly was not surprising. He predicted that the index will rise moderately in the next quarter, which is in line with the forecast of a moderate rise in Hong Kong's annual economic growth from the previous estimate of 2.6% to 2.2%.