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Global finance and accounting professionals remain deeply pessimistic about economic conditions, even as confidence nudged upward in Q2 2026. The ACCA and IMA’s quarterly Economic Confidence Index came in at -26.5, an improvement from Q1’s -39.5 but still well below its historical median for the fifteenth consecutive quarter. Eighty-three percent of CFO respondents reported rising costs, driven by commodity price spikes and supply chain fractures tied to Middle East conflict. The AI investment boom gets credit for partially cushioning global growth, but it’s not doing enough to move aggregate confidence.
What this means for your business
The survey’s most revealing data point isn’t the headline index, it’s that 22% of respondents named economic pressures as their top risk priority, ranking it above geopolitical instability and cybersecurity. That ordering matters for CFOs building scenario plans, because it signals that finance professionals have internalized the Middle East conflict as a cost and supply chain problem rather than a discrete geopolitical event to monitor from the sidelines. If your organization is still treating commodity exposure and logistics risk as a separate workstream from core financial planning, the practitioners running these numbers disagree with that architecture.
The AI offset is real but narrow. ACCA and IMA credit surging AI-related investment and tech stock gains for cushioning what would otherwise be a worse confidence reading. That framing, coming from organizations whose membership sells advisory services into the finance function, has an obvious incentive to frame AI positively. But the underlying data supports the claim directionally: AI infrastructure spend is large enough to show up in macro trade and investment figures. The problem is that the CFOs benefiting from AI tailwinds are concentrated in sectors adjacent to the build-out, primarily technology, financial services, and professional services. Manufacturers and logistics operators bearing the commodity shock are not getting a comparable offset.
The falsification condition worth watching is central bank policy. The report flags that persistent commodity inflation from the conflict could push major central banks toward further tightening. If that happens, the AI investment boom that’s been propping up equity valuations and business confidence becomes the first casualty, since rate-sensitive growth bets unwind fast. CFOs who’ve been quietly counting on a favorable rate environment to make their AI-related capital expenditure cases pencil out should be stress-testing those models against a scenario where the Strait of Hormuz disruptions outlast the current ceasefire pause.
Based on reporting from Accounting and finance pros hold dim view of global economic conditions, originally published 2026-07-30 08:49:00.
