The economic activity indicator slowed in February after January’s “strong acceleration”, while the economic climate indicator increased between January and March after stabilizing in the previous month, INE announced on Thursday.
According to the Síntese Económica de Conjuntura of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), “the economic activity indicator, which summarizes a series of quantitative indicators that reflect the evolution of the economy, slowed down in homologous terms in February, after the sharp acceleration verified in January”. This indicator had fallen in November and December.
In turn, the economic climate indicator, which reflects the balance of extreme answers to questions related to qualitative surveys of companies, “went up between January and March, after stabilizing the previous month”.
According to INE, the manufacturing output price index has slowed over the past eight months, “significantly in February and March”, with a year-on-year rate of change of 7.1% (12.4% in the previous month).
Excluding the energy component, this index increased by 8.3% year-on-year (10.8% in February).
As for the consumer goods index, it recorded a year-on-year change of 11.5% in March (14.8% in the previous month), a slowdown for the fourth month in a row, following November’s highest reading in to have reached the series (16.2%).
In turn, the year-on-year change in the consumer price index (CPI) slowed to 7.4% in March, a rate that was 0.8 percentage points lower than in the previous month.
The index referring to unprocessed food products “slowed and changed from a year-over-year variation of 20.1% in February, the highest rate since May 1990, to 19.3% in March.”
On the external side, implied prices of exports and imports of goods slowed for the sixth consecutive month in February to year-on-year increases of 7.1% in exports and 4.4% in imports (8% respectively). .1% and 7.0% in January).
The unemployment rate (16 to 74 years), seasonally adjusted, was 6.8% in February
According to INE, short-term indicators of economic activity from a manufacturing perspective, available for February, “point to a slowdown in manufacturing and services in nominal terms and in construction in real terms”.
From a spending point of view, the economic activity indicator and the quantitative indicator of the private consumption summary slowed in February, while the investment indicator increased year-on-year in February, following the decline recorded in the previous month. .
According to the INE Employment Survey’s monthly preliminary estimates, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (16 to 74 years old) was 6.8% in February, 0.2 percentage points lower than in the month (6.5% in November and 5.6 % in February 2022). .
The underutilization of the labor market (16 to 74 years old) was 12.0% in February, 0.2 percentage point less than in January (11.1% in January 2022) and the labor force (16 to 74 years old), also seasonally adjusted, increased by 0.6% year-on-year and 0.5% on the previous month (year-on-year change of 0.2% in January).
Source: DN
