EVERY year, around late March, I convince myself winter will never end. I survey my lifeless garden and panic that I’ve broken it. And then, just as it feels like the sun has deserted us for good, I spot a green shoot that tells me we’ve turned the corner and spring’s finally on the way.

It’s the same – if you’ll pardon the sledgehammer analogy – with economic winters. Just when it seemed the era of a moribund economy, beset by high inflation, low confidence and no staff would never end, are we at last seeing some tentative signs of a resurrection?

Well, some recent signs might give us grounds for cautious optimism. First, we had the GDP figures. No-one’s getting the bunting out for a 0.1% rise, but it did build on the similarly modest 0.2% rise in January, giving us some hope that things might be picking up. But wise heads are right to warn that a continued upward trajectory is not inevitable and needs concerted action to back the firms that will drive growth.

Praise for ‘tenacious and clever’ small businesses

Last week then brought the news that CPI inflation continues to fall – now at 3.2% in the year to March, down from 3.4% the previous month.

This is some respite from the inexorable price increases with which small firms have been battling – and raises hopes that the Bank of England will now deliver the base rate cut many eagerly await. That said, of course, prices are still going up. They’re still much higher than they were two years ago, consumers are still cautious, and margins are still squeezed.

More signs of encouragement came from last week’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showing Scottish unemployment dropped over the winter, while the numbers in work rose. Again, it’s marginal – the 4% unemployment rate for December, January and February is only a 0.4% drop on the autumn figures – but it’s still going in the right direction.

At the same time, we still have more than a fifth of the working-age population classed as “economically inactive” – those who, because of, say, long-term illness, disability or caring responsibilities, are neither working nor looking for work. While the economic inactivity rate of 22.6% is a slim drop of 0.2 percentage points from the previous quarter, it’s still far too high. Not only is this a criminal waste of those individuals’ potential, it’s a huge drag on the economy.

Interestingly, we’ve also seen reports from those working in the recruitment industry suggesting that the labour market might be rebalancing. So, even though we have more people in work, hiring difficulties may simultaneously be easing.

Net-zero challenges for businesses with commercial premises

Writing in The Herald last month, data analysis chief at s1jobs John Walls said this easing, noting it “is particularly evident across sectors that were hardest hit by lockdown measures, including wholesale, retail, accommodation, and food services”. Again, a glimmer of light for sectors that have been on the frontline of the cost of doing business crisis.

But we’ll need to see how this pans out. We know from our own Small Business Index (SBI) that at the back end of last year, confidence in those industries remained way below the headline figure for all businesses, and that headline confidence figure didn’t paint a particularly optimistic picture itself, being down 15 points on the previous quarter, with one in seven small firms bracing for a contraction in the size of their business over the next 12 months.

It will be interesting, therefore, to see what the next quarter’s SBI figures tell us about sentiment from January – and whether any confidence rebound is uniform or varies wildly across different sectors.

Ultimately, though, the key will be to get any re-emerging confidence up to a level where firms are ready to put investment and expansion plans into action and get more money moving round the economy.

Scotland's 'latte levy' must be designed for the real world

That means giving them confidence about the environment in which they’ll be trading by regulating proportionately, taxing fairly, and helping ease costs and margins wherever possible. In other words, all spheres of government – Holyrood, Westminster and local authorities – need to pursue an explicitly pro-growth agenda.

If a recovery is emerging, it’s nascent and fragile. It needs nurtured and protected until strong enough to be planted out and flourish on its own, not abandoned to traditional Scottish spring storms.

Colin Borland is director of devolved nations for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB)