In February 2024, contrasting signals emerge from the climate of opinion of economic operators.
The consumer confidence index increases from 96.4 to 97.0 while the composite indicator of business confidence decreases from 97.9 to 95.8.
Istat communicates this by specifying that "business confidence decreases while remaining at the average level of the last six months. The decline is due to a widespread worsening of confidence in all economic sectors".
The consumer confidence index, on the other hand, "continues to grow, without interruption, since last November and reaches the highest level since June 2023".
For consumers, Istat highlights "a positive evolution in assessments of the personal and current situation; opinions on the future situation remain substantially stable compared to last month while those on the general economic situation worsen".
In more detail: personal climate increases from 93.9 to 95.2 and current climate increases from 95.8 to 97.0;
the future climate remains substantially unchanged (from 97.2 to 97.1) while the economic climate decreases from 103.1 to 102.0.
As for businesses, the confidence index decreases in all four economic sectors investigated, albeit with different intensities: in construction and, above all, in retail trade, the most significant drops were recorded (from 107.0 to 104.4 and from 106.3 to 100.6) while in manufacturing and services a more limited decrease is estimated (the index drops, in order, from 88.1 to 87.3 and from 102.5 to 100.2).
Regarding the components of the confidence indices of the economic sectors, in manufacturing the opinions on orders and production expectations are worsening while a decrease in the balance of warehouse inventories is estimated;
in construction all variables recorded a negative evolution.
Moving on to the services sector, there is a worsening of all components in both market services and retail trade.
With reference to this last sector, it should be noted that the intensity of the decline recorded by the overall confidence index is due to the marked reduction of the indicator in large-scale retail trade (from 107.2 to 98.6), while in traditional distribution it observes an increase in the climate of confidence (from 105.9 to 109.6).
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