(Yicai Global) April 8 -- The Shanghai Investor Confidence Index for January through March climbed 3.12 points on a quarterly basis to 114.03 as investors remained optimistic despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

The index was roughly level with the same period last year, according to figures published today by the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics’ Applied Statistics Research Center and the Shanghai Social Research Center’s SUFE office today. The entrepreneur investment confidence index, which monitors a businessperson’s satisfaction with their current and projected status of production and operations, was up 1.59 points from the previous quarter at 115.22.

The novel coronavirus has had a huge impact on China’s economic and social life but the state’s active prevention and control of the pandemic have gradually improved the situation, said Prof. Xu Guoxiang, director of the SUFE Research Center for Applied Statistics, and Prof. Chang Ning from its School of Statistics and Management.

This alleviated the negative sentiment among investors, they added, saying that continued implementation of national policies to stabilize investment and foreign trade and boost consumption will lead most companies to believe improvements are underway.

The Shanghai institutional investor confidence also climbed 6.91 points to 120.37, a 6.99 point gain annually, and the individual investor confidence index was 108.06, up 8.38 points on the quarter and 7.51 on the year.

Editor: James Boynton