Portuguese economy slows down again in the first week of June

  • ECO News
  • 11 June 2021

At the beginning of June, Portugal was already moving ahead with the deconfinement, but the economy has not kept up with the pace.

The daily indicator of economic activity (DEI) slowed again at the beginning of June compared to the previous week, even as the country’s deconfinement progressed, according to data published this Friday by the Bank of Portugal (BoP).

“In the week ended on June 6, the daily economic indicator (DEI), as well as the corresponding biennial rate, decreased compared to the previous week,” the Bank of Portugal said. It should be noted that in the last two weeks of May, the Portuguese economy had already recorded a slowdown.

Despite this deceleration, there is still an improvement in the indicator that measures the daily economic activity in comparison with last year.

To mitigate the influence of the effects of the comparison with the previous year, a period already marked by the pandemic, the Bank of Portugal uses a biennial rate, which corresponds to “the variation in activity between a given day vis-à-vis the same day two years earlier,” to get the variation in activity between a certain day in a year compared to the same day two years earlier.

Looking at this biennial rate, the trend seen at the beginning of June is also showing a fall compared to the previous week. The economy was stagnating compared to the average of the last two years, and is now back below a zero rate of change, registering a small pullback.