MADRID/SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Jan. 19 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Harmonized Business Confidence Indicator (ICEA), published by the National Statistics Institute (INE), rose 1.4% in the first quarter of this year, in contrast to the 2.9% drop experienced in the three last months of 2022.
In the case of the Canary Islands, the Harmonized Business Confidence Index increased by 4.4% in the first quarter of 2023, which places the Archipelago as the second autonomous community with the highest increase, behind the Basque Country (+5.7% ).
The increase in business confidence registered for the January-March period is due to the improvement in both the expectations indicator and the current situation indicator, in a context that continues to be marked by the war in Ukraine, a still high inflation rate and rates higher interest.
Specifically, the balance of expectations (difference between the opinions of optimistic and pessimistic businessmen) stood at -9.8 points in the first three months of this year, compared to the decrease of 11.8 points registered in the previous quarter .
This is due to the fact that the percentage of business establishments that think that the progress of their business will be unfavorable between January and March of this year has stood at 24.9%, a figure lower than that of the previous quarter (27.3%). , while the percentage of entrepreneurs who foresee a “normal” quarter for their business has increased, from 57.2% to 60%.
In contrast, those who think that their business will evolve favorably in the first quarter have fallen from 15.5% in the previous quarter to 15.1%.
IMPROVES THE PERCEPTION OF THE CURRENT SITUATION
For its part, the balance sheet (difference between favorable and unfavorable responses compared to the quarter that ended) has improved by more than three points compared to the previous quarter, going from -2.3 points in the fourth quarter of 2022 to +1.1 points in the first three months of this year.
This more positive view of the current situation is the result of the increase in business establishments who think that their business has performed favorably in the last three months and the decrease in those who think that it behaved negatively.
Thus, regarding the last quarter that has already ended (fourth quarter of 2022), the ICEA shows that 21.1% of business establishments have a favorable opinion of how their business worked in those three months, compared to 20% of establishments that have appreciated an unfavorable evolution in this period and 58.9% who speak of normality.
These percentages were 20.1%, 22.4% and 57.5%, respectively, in the previous quarter.
The ICEA, which is published quarterly and is comparable at a European level, is drawn up from a representative sample of business establishments.
During the first quarter of this year, business confidence rose in all economic sectors except transport and hospitality, it advanced in all company sizes, except those with less than 10 employees, and increased in twelve autonomous communities.
INDUSTRY, WHERE CONFIDENCE RISES THE MOST
Thus, according to Statistics data, of the five economic sectors analysed, the one that increased confidence the most in the first quarter was industry (+3.5%), followed by commerce (+2.6%), the construction (+1.8%) and other services (+1.1%). In contrast, business confidence fell by 3% in transport and hospitality.
Regarding the size of the establishments, confidence only worsened in those with less than 10 employees (-0.4%). The greatest advances in confidence occurred in companies with a thousand or more employees (+3.4%) and in those with 10 to 49 workers (+2.9%). In establishments with 200 to 999 employees, confidence increased by 2.6% compared to the fourth quarter of 2022, and in those with 50 to 199 employees, it increased by 1.3%.
By communities, business confidence fell in the Balearic Islands (-4%), the Valencian Community (-1.2%), Cantabria (-0.9%), Catalonia (-0.3%) and La Rioja (-0.2 %) and increased in the 12 remaining regions, especially in the Basque Country (+5.7%), the Canary Islands (+4.4%), Aragón (+3.5%), Murcia (+3.3%), Castilla y León (+3.1%) and Madrid (+2.9%).
The most moderate advances in business confidence in the first quarter occurred in Castilla-La Mancha and Asturias, which registered a slight increase of 0.2% in both cases.
For the elaboration of this indicator, the OECD, the German Ifo and, above all, the Japanese Tankan, prepared by the Central Bank of the Japanese country, are taken as methodological reference.
