Christmas beats the crisis of government and brings optimism among consumers, but not businesses – The Republic

the MILAN - A December with such high temperatures it also heats the confidence of Italian consumers, who snub the government crisis, while the same cannot be said of the companies.

According to Istat, the consumer confidence improves (with the index rising from 108,1 to 111,1) returning to its level of July 2016. It is an unexpected increase by the forecasters, the economic, encouraging after a long trend of decline, and that, according to Paolo Mameli of Intesa Sanpaolo could have predicted a “marginal acceleration of the Gdp at the beginning of 2017″: meanwhile, “the outcome of the constitutional referendum (the data are collected by Istat in the first twelve days of the month, ed), as well as the subsequent crisis of government, however, resolved in a very short time – does not seem to have had impact on the confidence of economic operators”. But it is a trend that is repeated from the index of climate of business confidence, which descends from 101,4 to 100,3 points with trends that are diversified in the sectors. The numbers that emerge while economists of the Abi, the association of banks, branch out their forecas ts on the economy of the tricolor, who, as often happens in these times is the yes to growth, but only at the “slow pace”.

“as far as the consumer“, recorded by the Istat, “the improvement is widespread to all components of the climate of trust”: the economic climate, which measures the expectations of the performance of the Country, passes by 127,6 to e133.8. Unlike often in the past, the climate and the current rise (for the second month in a row), passing, respectively, from 101,3 at 102,7, and 103,7 106.2. The component of the future returns to increase in the month of December (113,8 to 116,2), from the higher level by June 2016.

“the opinions of The consumers regarding the economic situation of the Country improves decisively the remaining balance goes from -53 to -40) as well as the expectations, the balance returns to increase (from -20 to -16) after seven consecutive months of decline”. Analyzing the opinions on the trend of consumer prices, however, is still the prevailing opinions and expectations, oriented to the decrease of prices: for the reviews, the balance passes by ?34 to -36 and the expectations from -28 to -34. Finally, a decrease for the second consecutive month the expectations for the unemployment (from 28 to 20).

from the enterprises, as we said, the dynamics changes from case to case. Worsens the confidence in the services (the index fell from 105,0 to 102,5) and construction (124,2 to 120,4); however, in manufacturing and in retail trade the index rises, respectively, to 102,2 to 103.5 and 106.5 to eur 107.4.

Coming to the estimates of the Abi, for 2016 and for 2017 it is expected a positive change of the Italian Gdp to 9-tenths of a point, 2 tenths higher than the year 2015; by 2018 we can see a strengthening of growth to 1.2%. Looking at the sun banks, cleaning up balance sheets and the improvement of the quality of the loans granted: the stock of net non-performing loans should decline by more than 16 billion euros between 2015 and 2018. Also the profitability is seen in the recovery, “but still insufficient to remunerate adequately the capital invested”.