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IT: Business and Consumer Confidence
| Actual | Previous | |
| Business Confidence | 95.2 | 97.3 |
| Manufacturing Confidence | 87.9 | 88.8 |
| Consumer Confidence | 90.8 | 92.6 |
Highlights
Confidence fell across major categories in April no doubt impacted by the conflict in the Middle East, with business sentiment dropping to 95.2 from 97.3 in March.
Consumers were also more downbeat in April than in March with the measure falling to 90.8 from 92.6 with measures for both current conditions and future expectations falling in April. Italians were also more negative about their personal situation in April as shown by the index falling to 93.8 from 94.2 in March.
Manufacturing which has been facing challenges from order books and higher prices suffered further. The reading dropped to 87.9 from 88.7 the month before, dragged down by the assessment of order books which fell to minus 19.4 from minus 17.8, while production expectations slipped to 0.7 from 1.4.
The only positive note was in the retail trade sector which saw a modest increase in confidence to 100.8 from 100.5, buoyed by a modestly positive assessment of current conditions. At the same time, the future outlook worsened.
With seemingly no imminent resolution to the conflict likely, these developments threaten to become a negative spiral, with the lack of confidence and ability to plan amid the turmoil hampering new production and by extension a willingness to order more goods.
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.