Letter IEDI n. 1242—October: a month with no advance
In the month of Oct'23, there was no growth in the major economic sectors. The best performer was the industry, which remained virtually flat, while services and retail trade lost real revenue. The low dynamism that marked Q3'23 thus continued at the beginning of the last quarter of the year.
The result of the industry in Oct'23 was only +0.1%, after seasonal adjustment; both sectorally and regionally, performance tended more towards the positive sign than the negative one.
If we consider as stable activities with rates between -0.5% and +0.5%, excluding the extreme values of the interval, the sectoral profile of the industry is divided into: 52% of the branches grew, 20% were stable and 28% decreased.
Taking its macro-sectors, only one of them managed to grow: intermediate goods, with a variation of +0.9% compared to Sep'23. Those whose markets are most impacted by high levels of interest rates led the falls: -2.4% in durable consumer goods and -1.1% in capital goods. Semi-durable and non-durable consumer goods registered -0.3%.
From the point of view of regional industry parks, the increases were more prevalent: 60% of the locations monitored by the IBGE. There was stability in 20% of the parks and drops in 28% of them.
The positive highlight in Oct'23 was the Northeast (+4.2% versus Sep'23, with adjustment), due to advances in Bahia and Pernambuco, but it is worth noting that larger and more complete industrial parks also performed better than the national total, such as São Paulo (+0.6%), Minas Gerais (+0.7%) and Rio Grande do Sul (+1.2%).
Retail trade, in turn, saw its real sales fall by 0.4% between Sep'23 and Oct'23, if considered in its broad concept, which includes the branches of vehicles, auto parts, construction material and wholesale-retail. In the previous month it had also not grown (0% in Sep'23 against Aug'23, with adjustment).
Using the same criterion applied to the industry, the share of retail branches in expansion in Oct'23 was of only 30%, with emphasis on construction material (+2.8%, with adjustment) and pharmaceutical, orthopedic and perfumery articles (+1.4%).
Another 30% remained virtually stable and 40% of retail branches fell. The most intense drops were in: office, computer and communication equipment (-5.7%, with adjustment), fabrics, clothing and footwear (-1.9%) and supermarkets, food, beverages and tobacco (-0.8%).
Finally, the services sector, which performed the worst in Oct'23, registered a 0.6% drop in real revenue compared to Sep'23, with seasonal adjustment. It was also the sector with the lowest share of segments in the black: only 20% of them.
This means that only one service segment reported an increase in revenue in Oct'23, since the IBGE classification has five major branches. This was the case of professional, administrative and complementary services, which increased by +1.0%.
Among the other segments, 40% were stable and 40% registered a drop, with emphasis on transport, postal services and their auxiliaries (-2.0%), whose evolution is more related to the general level of economic activity, and services provided to households (-2.1%), which has recently been oscillating between highs and lows in the seasonally adjusted series.