The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) has given a strong endorsement to the National Broadband Network in spite of urging Labor to provide hard data on the economic benefits of the infrastructure project.

Peter Anderson, ACCI chief executive, spoke on Network Ten, saying that the business community in the country saw the benefits the national broadband infrastructure initiatives could bring to the economy.

"The instinct in the business community is that there can be a real productivity kick and benefit," said Anderson during his appearance on Meet The Press.

In spite the show of confidence, Anderson said that the party would have to do a better job of addressing concerns over the project's cost.

"There is also a hard headed approach... which says that we need to ascertain whether the productivity benefits and economic benefits are likely to offset the costs because the costs are very substantial," Anderson said.

However, he refrained from going as far as calling for a full cost-benefit analysis. "There needs to be, I think, more transparency in what those costs are, but I think business does recognise that in the short term at least there will be some cost which are not able to be returned in a direct way," Anderson said.

"There will also need to be some subsidisation into regional Australia, that's recognised with major infrastructure like this, but we don't want to sign a blank cheque off if we are going to roll out major infrastructure like this."

"There does need to be hard headed economic approach to these kind of decisions even though the instinct in the business community is that there can be a real productivity kick and benefit with getting on with the job."