The National Australia Bank (NAB) released its Quarterly Business Confidence Survey on Thursday. The NAB business confidence index fell to 4 in the first quarter from 5 in the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter's figure was revised up from 4.

Business conditions outlook remained positive, while a resilient non-mining recovery and an outlook continued to improve.

"We find it encouraging to see that firms are continuing to look past all the 'noise' in financial markets to focus on what is going on at home, and in their own business. Market volatility could eventually start to have an impact on the economy via sentiment channels, but at this stage firms actually appear more optimistic about the outlook ", NAB Group Chief Economist Alan Oster said.