Economic activity stable, private consumption down in May

  • Lusa
  • 23 June 2022

Since the beginning of the year, the average rate of change of the monthly coincident indicator for economic activity is 7%.

The coincident indicator for economic activity in May showed a rate close to that recorded in previous months, while the coincident indicator for private consumption decreased again, the Bank of Portugal (BoP) said on Thursday.

In May, the year-on-year rate of change in the indicator for economic activity was 7.1%, in line with the last two months, while the year-on-year rate of change in the indicator for private consumption fell from 5.2% in April to 4.6%.

Since the beginning of the year, the average rate of change of the monthly coincident indicator for economic activity is 7%, while that of the monthly coincident indicator for private consumption is 5.9% (in the same period of 2021, the average rate of change of these indicators was 3.1% and 4.7%, respectively).

The coincident indicators are composite indicators that seek to capture the underlying evolution of the year-on-year change of the respective macroeconomic aggregate, and therefore do not reflect at each moment the year-on-year rate of change of the respective National Accounts aggregate.

Noting that the incorporation of new information may be reflected on a monthly basis in the revision of past values of coincident indicators, the BoP warns that, at the current juncture, there may be higher than usual monthly revisions of these indicators.

Also today, the BoP reported that, in the week ending 19 June, the daily economic activity indicator (DEI), which portrays the evolution of the Portuguese economy in almost real time, points to a similar year-on-year change to that of the previous week.

The DEI is an indicator launched by the BoP to identify abrupt changes in economic activity, but it is not an official BoP or Eurosystem forecast.