THE mood among small businesses at a seminar held by the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) today was anything but bubbly.
Sure, nobody was lamenting how they had lost his or her job, while there were no real gripes about stockmarket’s plunges in recent weeks.
But contrast this with the champagne-popping feel-good sentiment felt among businessmen at the array of lunch meetings and seminars I’ve attended earlier this year, and the differences are very stark.
Conversation I was privy to on the sidelines of the SBF seminar centered on the weakness of the local economy and about whether the outlook would be better next year.
Most of the businessmen I spoke to were not sanguine.
Gone were buzzwords like "capital expansion" and "ramping up supply". Instead, the nuggets of advice thrown out yesterday involved remarks like "expense-cutting to cope with hard times" and "efficiency management to drive costs down".
"My greatest fear is my customers will stop spending," said PASR commercial director Max Collins, when asked for his thoughts about the growth forecast that the economist-speakers had given about the Singapore economy.
"If times are bad, my customers wouldn’t upgrade their PCs and their softwares," Mr Collins tells you about his Singapore clients his information technology firm services.
CIMB-GK Research economist Song Seng Wun, for example, was predicting that in the worst case scenario, GDP growth for Singapore next year could be anything from negative three per cent to negative five per cent.
"A wave of bank failures. More to go?" asked OCBC Bank economist Selena Ling rhetorically.
She was another speaker who said Singapore is facing growing headwinds. But the Integrated Resort coming up should provide "some upside" too, she assured the audience.
The seminar, organised by the business chamber to give small businesses an outlook about the economy, drew around 100 senior and middle management staff.
"The slowdown is worrying," said Singapore Noble Electronics’ director Gan Giap Leong, who was present yesterday.
"The electronics (sector) has been feeling the heat for the last year, so if there’s a downturn, the situation will get a lot worse."
He expects some of his customers to revise their purchase forecast downwards pretty soon. The firm manufactures electronics components for the likes of Sony and Philips.
Singapore Manufacturers’ Federation president Renny Yeo said his member companies can still borrow from banks.
But with banks overseas said to be unwilling to lend due to the credit crunch and the absence of confidence in the marketplace, Mr Yeo hopes banks in Singapore will not tighten the supply of cash to financially-sound firms here.
"Most of the companies already have facilities in place, but come next year, when it’s time to renew them, we hope that banks will oblige," he said.
"Remember," he pauses for effect as he looks at you intently. "If banks take away the umbrella or keep it to themselves, then our member-firms might have a hard time."
Judging from yesterday’s events, Singapore businesses are indeed bracing themselves for a slower economy and preparing themselves for harder times.