Fiscal deficits, over-regulation and the economy top concerns in PwC's 16th Annual Global CEO survey Davos, 22 January 2012. Only 36% of CEOs worldwide are ‘very confident' of their company's growth prospects in the next 12 months, according to PwC's 16th Annual Global CEO Survey. That's down from 40% who were 'very confident' of short term growth last year and 48% in 2011, but still above the lows of 31% and 21% in 2010 and 2009. Looking at the economy generally, 28% of CEOs say the global economy will decline further in 2013, and only 18% predict economic improvement; 52% say it will stay the same. While the CEOs' outlook remains gloomy, the forecast is an improvement on last year when 48% of CEOs predicted the global economy would decline in 2012. CEOs in Western Europe were least confident of short term revenue growth. Faced with ongoing recession, just 22% 0f Western European CEOs said they were very confident of growth, down from 27% last year and 39% in 2011. Confidence in short term growth also declined in North America to 33% (42% in 2012) and in Asia Pacific to 36% (42% in 2012). Even in Africa, seen by many as the next high-growth economy, CEO confidence in company growth slipped to 44%, from 57% last year. Latin American CEOs, however, bucked the trend. Their short term confidence rose to 53% of CEOs, up slightly from last year. At the country level, confidence varied widely: CEOs are most confident in Russia where 66% are very confident of revenue growth in 2013, closely followed by India (63%) and Mexico (62%). They were trailed by countries including Brazil (44%), China (40%), Germany (31%), the US (30%), the UK (22%), Japan (18%), France (13%) and finally Korea, where only 6% of CEOs are very confident of revenue growth in the year ahead. [see note 2] Longer term, overall CEO confidence remained stable; 46% of CEOs worldwide said they were very confid