Why do businesses spend time, effort, and money to produce forecasts?  Explain.

Businesses fail or succeed depending on how well prepared they are to deal with the situations they confront in the future.  Thus they expend considerable sums making approximation (forecasts) of what the future situation is likely to be.  Businesses develop fresh products, set production quotas and select financing resource based on forecasts about the future economic environment and the firm's condition.  If economists forecast interest rates will be relatively high, for instance, firms may plan to defer expansion and limit borrowing plans.