Portuguese economy is already growing above 2019 levels – Mário Centeno
In year-on-year terms, the Bank of Portugal's economic activity indicator has already shown growth when compared with the last week of April 2019.
In the last week of April, the Portuguese economy was already producing more than in the same week of 2019. This is what the Bank of Portugal’s daily indicator of economic activity (DEI) will show on Thursday, Mário Centeno revealed at a press conference this Wednesday.
The governor of the Bank of Portugal explained the indicator shows a “very significant recovery in the growth trend” of the Portuguese economy in recent weeks. In particular, concerning the last week of April, the DEI will show a “trend above what is the 2019 value of this indicator.”
Besides showing “extremely high year-on-year growth compared to 2020,” the economic activity indicator will already report “positive year-on-year growth in the last week of April compared to 2019,” which is “much more relevant,” Centeno said.
In recent weeks — because the comparison is already made in relation to the first 2020 lockdown — this BoP indicator has recorded year-on-year growth between 10% and 20%. However, in the two-year accumulated DEI (2019 and 2020), to smooth out the effect of the comparison with the first lockdown, the values were not yet positive, which should become so in this Thursday’s report.
This new indicator released at the beginning of this year by the central bank incorporates extensive data collection, such as card-based payments, road traffic of heavy commercial vehicles, cargo and mail landed, electricity consumption and natural gas consumption.
