Overall, business confidence rose in June. At 93.9, the Istat gauge is up from May's unrevised 93.1, with manufacturing confidence rising from 86.6 to 87.3.

Meanwhile, retail trade confidence showed a decline from 102.8 to 101.9 due to the decline in large-scale distribution. The service climate grew from 94.5 to 95.6 due to improvements in the current business trend and order book volume. Construction confidence also grew, from 102.1 to 103.4, with expectations for future employment growing.

Consumer confidence declined from 96.5 in May to 96.1, due to decline in several components, including economic climate, current economic situation, as well as private climate.

In summary, the report suggests potential growth across business and manufacturing, activity this month.

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.