The consumer confidence index exhibited a slight yet noteworthy uptick in July, rising from 98.3 to 98.9. This overall improvement is reflected in its subcomponents, where personal confidence ascended from 95.8 to 96.5, the future confidence outlook nudged up from 98.7 to 99.4, current confidence crept from 98.1 to 98.5, and economic sentiment edged from 105.3 to 105.6. However, the business confidence climate took a minor dip from 94.5 to 94.2.

Despite this, the manufacturing sector showed resilience with its confidence rising from 86.9 to 87.6. This was driven by better assessments of order books, improving from minus 22.8 to minus 20.5. Manufacturing expectations remained fairly stable, shifting from 1.3 to 1.4. Meanwhile, inventory levels saw a modest build-up, with the related balance increasing from 2.6 to 2.8.

Overall, the slight upward trend in consumer confidence signals cautious optimism among individuals about personal and economic prospects, while the business sector faces a mix of challenges and resilience, particularly within manufacturing. As a result, the Italian RPI and RPI-P now stands at 0, indicating that the consumer and business confidence are in line with market expectations.

Italy's manufacturing confidence index is forecast at 86.9 in July, little changed from 86.8 in June, when it deteriorated from May's 88.2, while the consumer confidence index is seen unchanged at 98.3 after improving from 96.4.

The Italian statistics office (Istat) conducts business and consumer confidence surveys over the first fifteen and ten working days of each reference month respectively. These provide information about current and expected developments in key sector variables. The largely qualitative results are synthesized for each survey into a single number that provides an overall measure of sentiment. Business confidence reflects the combined results of separate surveys covering manufacturing, retail, construction and services.

If investors want to know how the business or consumer sectors are performing as they evaluate their investment decisions, they can find timely and in depth information in the latest Istat surveys. Although short-term swings can be erratic, changes in trends in confidence can contain very useful information about a sector’s underlying health well in advance of the release of the official data. Moreover, by including some forward-looking components (e.g. manufacturing orders or consumer buying intentions) the Istat surveys can also provide a potential insight into prospective developments.