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IT: Business and Consumer Confidence
| Actual | Previous | Revised | |
| Business Confidence | 97.6 | 96.5 | 96.6 |
| Manufacturing Confidence | 89.2 | 88.4 | |
| Consumer Confidence | 96.8 | 96.6 |
Highlights
Confidence among consumers and businesses started the year off on a positive note, with the outlook improving as well. Consumer confidence improved to 96.8 in January from 96.6 in December, while the outlook among businesses improved to 97.6 from 96.6.
Within business confidence, that among manufacturers climbed to 89.2 in January from 88.5 the previous month, and reflects an improvement in the sector which is supported by other indicators. The improvement came on the heels of improved order books and an expected improvement in production.
Also encouraging is the increase in future developments, with the measure rising to 92.3 from 91.6. At the same time, current conditions were generally unchanged.
Services which had been flagging in recent private sector reports showed broad improvement in January, with the overall index coming in at 103.4 from 100.2. Conversely, the retail sector experienced a setback due to faltering expectations and increased inventories. The January result of 102.5 was a marked decline from the 106.9 in December.
The overall result is a welcome one, but the retail sector should be a concern as consumers still appear to be cautious which will act as a brake on economic activity.
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.