Business and consumer confidence picked up sharply in June. According to the latest Istat surveys, the consumer confidence climate marks 115.1 from the previous 110.6 while the composite index of business confidence reaches 112.8 from 107.3. Confidence in manufacturing and, above all, in services is expected to improve. In particular, in the manufacturing industry the index rises from 110.9 to 114.8, in market services it increases from 99.1 to 106.7 and in retail trade it increases from 99.9 to 106.7. Only in construction did the confidence index decrease slightly, passing from 153.9 to 153.6. In the manufacturing industry, assessments on orders and expectations on production improved with inventories judged to have slightly accumulated compared to last month. There was a clear growth in confidence in the intermediate goods sector. With regard to construction, the opinions on the level of orders are improving while there is a decline in employment expectations at the company; among the sectors there is a marked decline in the confidence index in the civil engineering sector.
With reference to market services, the balances of all the components of the index have risen sharply. Confidence is definitely improving in the transport and warehousing sector while it is slightly decreasing in tourism and business services. In the retail sector, the rise in the index is driven by the improvement in assessments on both sales and inventories; sales expectations decrease. As regards the distribution circuits, there was a marked improvement in confidence in traditional distribution (the index went from 92.7 to 101.5); in large-scale distribution the dynamic, albeit positive, is more contained (the index rises from 103.0 to 108.6).
“The positive signs for the summer of Italy” in white “are consolidated, in June the recovery of the climate of consumer and business confidence is confirmed, the result of the reopening and the return to normality, together with the progress of the vaccination campaign” . This is the comment of the Confesercenti Economic Office. For its part, Confcommercio reports how “the progress of the vaccination campaign and the significant remission of infections, together with the drastic reduction in the accounting of deaths, influence the June data on the climate of confidence of families and businesses that unequivocally show strong expectations of recovery. Consumer sentiment, with a jump of more than 4% compared to May, returns to the levels of the central months of 2018, the highest since 2000. Therefore, the optimal conditions for the recovery of demand consistent with a change are realizing of GDP close to 5% in the current year ».
Loading…