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IT: Business and Consumer Confidence
| Actual | Previous | Revised | |
| Business Confidence | 94.1 | 95.2 | 95.1 |
| Manufacturing Confidence | 87.9 | 87.9 | |
| Consumer Confidence | 93.4 | 90.8 |
Highlights
Consumer confidence recovered in May, rising to a reading of 93.4 from 90.8 in April, the highest level since February, which is the month before the war in the Middle East began. The future outlook climbed to 87.2 from 82.5, with current conditions improving to 98.0 from 96.9.
The same was not true for May business confidence which slipped to 94.1 from a revised 95.1 in March, and has been in decline since at least February.
In the manufacturing sector, the reading held steady at 87.9. Order books for manufacturing improved in April, while inventories increased, reflecting a broader trend among European economies that saw businesses increase orders and inventories to get ahead of price increases and likely supply chain bottlenecks.
Retailers were modestly more confident in May than in April, resulting in a reading of 101.0 from 100.8. While current conditions improved for the third month in a row, the outlook for coming sales was lower.
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.