| Actual | Previous | Revised | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Confidence | 95.7 | 94.7 | |
| Manufacturing Confidence | 86.7 | 87.1 | 87.0 |
| Consumer Confidence | 98.3 | 96.1 |
Highlights
Overall business confidence improved in September. At 95.7, the Istat gauge was up from 94.7 in August to record its highest mark since April. However, it remains well short of its long-run average.
Moreover, the headline gain was not mirrored in manufacturing where confidence dipped from a marginally weaker revised 87.0 to 86.7, its weakest print so far in 2024. Elsewhere, construction (101.9 after 103.3) also lost ground, but there were gains in both services (100.6 after 98.0) and retail trade (102.3 after 101.5).
Consumer confidence (98.3 after 96.1) similarly improved but failed to reverse all of August's 2.8 point decline. Still, the latest reading matched its second-strongest print so far this year.
In sum, the report points to subdued growth of both business and consumer activity. To this end, today's update leaves the Italian RPI at minus 15 and the RPI-P at minus 6, both measures showing economic activity in general falling slightly short of market expectations.
Moreover, the headline gain was not mirrored in manufacturing where confidence dipped from a marginally weaker revised 87.0 to 86.7, its weakest print so far in 2024. Elsewhere, construction (101.9 after 103.3) also lost ground, but there were gains in both services (100.6 after 98.0) and retail trade (102.3 after 101.5).
Consumer confidence (98.3 after 96.1) similarly improved but failed to reverse all of August's 2.8 point decline. Still, the latest reading matched its second-strongest print so far this year.
In sum, the report points to subdued growth of both business and consumer activity. To this end, today's update leaves the Italian RPI at minus 15 and the RPI-P at minus 6, both measures showing economic activity in general falling slightly short of market expectations.
Definition
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.
Description
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.
