The country’s top corporate executives foresee pretty good business prospects even as the economy makes its way through a sluggish spell.

A survey by the Business Roundtable, released Tuesday, also showed that most executives expected sales, capital investment and hiring to remain at current levels or be boosted in the coming months. Chief executive officers “see favorable business conditions continuing,” said the group’s chairman, Harold McGraw III, president and chief executive officer of The McGraw-Hill Companies. “While the survey does suggest that the U.S. economy is settling into a somewhat softer consolidation phase, as long as consumers keep spending, the economy can continue to move ahead,” he added.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday that he expects the economy to bounce back from an extremely weak first quarter. Bernanke said he believes some of the forces that figured prominently in that poor performance - including a bloated trade deficit, cutbacks by businesses in inventory investment and weak federal defense spending - will be partially reversed “in the near term.” In the survey, 92% of chief executives said they expected their sales to hold steady or increase over the next six months. On the hiring front, 75% said they expected to hold payrolls at current levels or boost payrolls.

Meanwhile, 87% said they would hold capital investment steady or increase it. That compared with 91% in the previous survey. “What I think you are seeing there is a cautiousness,” McGraw said.

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