The economy continued to fall at the start of the year and deepened the contraction that it had registered since the end of 2023. In January, the monthly estimator of economic activity had a drop of 4.3% compared to the same month last year and
1.2% compared
to the same month last year.
of the month of December in the seasonally adjusted measurement as reported this afternoon by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses.
This is
the third time, in a row, that the economy indicator presents negative results.
Thus, it accumulates a contraction of 6.1% between November, December and January.
"The year starts, in line with expectations, deepening the decline in the last quarter of 2023," commented the economist at the Ledesma consulting firm, Gabriel Caamaño.
In relation to the same month in 2023, only five sectors of activity that make up the emae registered
increases in January,
among which agriculture, livestock, hunting and forestry (11.1%) and mining and quarrying (5.2%) stand out. .
The agriculture, livestock, hunting and forestry sector (11.1%) was in turn the one with the greatest positive impact on the interannual variation followed by mining and quarrying (5.2%).
However, there were ten sectors that showed
declines in the year-on-year comparison
, among which
construction
(16.9% yoy), fishing (13.5% yoy) and financial intermediation (12.6% yoy) stand out.
Furthermore, according to official data, industry fell 11.3% in the last year and trade, with a fall of 8.2%,
contributed 2.7 percentage points to the year-on-year fall of the EMAE.
According to the survey of market expectations prepared by the Central Bank, in the first quarter of the year the economy would have a fall of 3.7%.
This means that with January's data (-4.3%), activity should register a rebound in the following two months.
"In three months of consecutive decline, since October 2023, economic activity suffered a decline of almost 6%. To find a greater slide, we must go to the beginning of the pandemic or to the post-STEP 2019," commented Caamaño.
For his part, Lorenzo Sigault Graviña, economist at Equilibra, said that: "The fall in inflation is greater than expected but so is that of activity."