BEIJING - Confidence among Chinese entrepreneurs fell in the third quarter of the year from the second quarter, a central bank survey revealed on Wednesday.

The entrepreneur confidence index, a gauge of views and opinions from Chinese entrepreneurs on the domestic economy, retreated 1 percentage point to 62.8 percent, said the People's Bank of China.

But the decrease rate narrowed 3.2 percentage points from that in the previous quarter.

The index was 3.6 percentage points higher year on year.

About 59.4 percent of respondents thought the macro-economy was "normal," 37.8 percent said it was "relatively cold" and 2.8 percent believed it to be "relatively hot."

As for export orders, they remained "unchanged" for 62.3 percent in the third quarter from the second quarter, with 18.6 percent receiving fewer and 19.1 percent getting more orders.

There was a similar performance for domestic orders. About 61.6 percent said orders were "unchanged," 21 percent received fewer and 17.4 percent had more.

The quarterly index surveys 5,000 entrepreneurs.