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Recession: what are the private data that marked the bottom of the fall in economic activity in April - Infobae
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Recesión: cuáles son los datos privados que marcaron en abril el piso de la caída de la actividad económica
Con excepción del agro, no hay sector que muestre variación positiva con respecto al mismo mes del año pasado. Pero en términos mensuales, hay señales en la construcción, el sector automotriz e incluso el consumo que alientan la teoría oficial de que “ya pasó lo peor”
www.infobae.com
May 24, 2024
With the exception of agriculture, there is no sector that shows positive variation with respect to the same month last year. But in monthly terms, there are signs in construction, the automotive sector and even consumption that encourage the official theory that “the worst is over.”
By Virginia Porcella
A worker unloads cement at a construction site in the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina), in a file photograph. EFE/ Demian Alday Estévez
24 hours after the very harsh official data on the fall in economic activity during the first quarter of the year were known, some private indicators tend to agree with the expectations of the officials of the economic team. In this area, they predict that, hand in hand with the reactivation of the agricultural sector, the economy will have hit the bottom between March and April to begin, from that moment on, a path of recovery that some admit could be somewhat slower and less pronounced than what is publicly announced, that is, the famous “V” recovery.
One of the data that encouraged these projections came from the consulting firm Equilibra, the first in the market to publish its preview of economic activity according to which, in April, although the economy continued to plummet in the year-on-year comparison, the skid in March would have found a brake This is because in the monthly comparison, without seasonality, activity had no variation in April compared to March. That is, there was no growth on average, no rebound or recovery, but there was no fall either. The half-full part of the glass.
Of course, this performance was not homogeneous within each sector. Many of them do continue to decline, a variation that is averaged with the growth of other sectors, essentially agriculture and mining.
“For April 2024, the advance of Equilibra's Monthly Economic Activity Estimator (EMAE) foresees a contraction of 3.5% year-on-year , with a monthly stagnation of 0.0% of the seasonally adjusted series,” announced the report of the consulting firm whose measurement explained that “in the fourth month of the year, the EMAE excluding the agricultural sector suffered a sharp fall, although softer than that registered in March 2024: -7.2% year-on-year (an improvement of 3.1 percentage points vs. March 2024 ). The seasonally adjusted series continued downward and fell 0.5% compared to March 2024."
That is to say that, even excluding agriculture , the sector that due to seasonality shows the greatest dynamism at this time of the year, activity registered a relatively smaller negative monthly variation or, at least, much smoother than what occurred between January and March.
In the agricultural sector, specifically, its post-drought recovery deepened since, according to Equilibra, it rose 38% year-on-year and 4% seasonally adjusted monthly. “If agriculture had not grown, the fall in the EMAE in April would go from -3.5% annually to -6.6 percent.”
Thus, economic activity in the first quarter of 2024 suffered a cumulative drop of 4.8% year-on-year, which moderates the drop in the first quarter, which stood at 5.3% according to INDEC.
Other preliminary activity data converge with the statistics of the consulting firm founded by the former head of Anses, Diego Bossio, and Martín Rapetti. For example, cement shipments , a key indicator for the construction industry that had been experiencing a sharp slide, advanced 4.4% in April compared to March, always with marked year-on-year falls.
The automotive industry also provided positive data in the context of the recession. Already in March, the sector had recorded a production increase of 15% compared to February, when many of the plants were stopped due to complications in the supply of parts. With 3 fewer business days, in April activity marked a slight decline compared to the previous month of 0.4%, which would indicate that at least the level of activity could be sustained.
But the most surprising data of all was provided yesterday by the Argentine Chamber of Commerce, according to which consumption fell 4.5% in April , which implied the largest year-on-year drop so far this year. However, in the comparison of April versus March, the level of consumption recovered 0.6%, which is a marginal positive variation but would indicate the end of the decline.
“The accumulated in 2024 compared to 2023 reflects a drop of 3.4% and the negative evolution is expected to continue. The positive thing is that the inter-monthly variation (leaving aside seasonal effects) once again had a positive sign of 0.6%,” the survey indicated.
