The President of the Bank for Economic Development for Puerto Rico (BDE), Pablo Muñiz Reis, on Saturday released data related to the Economic Activity Index (IAE) for November 2020.
The report reveals a 6.8 percent reduction when compared to the previous year’s month.
“In cumulative terms, the IAE-BDE average for 2019 was 122.6. This shows an increase of 1.6 per cent against fiscal year 2020, the second consecutive annual growth after five years with annual reductions in a row. However, the accumulated average of the IAE-BDE for the previous year ended at 119.6, which translates into a drop of 2.0 percent versus fiscal year 2019, ”Muñiz Reis said in written statements.
This would be the ninth consecutive decline after 20 months of year-on-year increases.
Muñiz Reis stressed that the crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic caused job losses and complicated the operation in the health sector, so that the Government faces new challenges. These include developing other strategies that encourage economic activity, investing in small and medium-sized businesses to accelerate the recovery of displaced jobs.
The accumulated average of the IAE-BDE for the period from January to November of the year 2020 was 115.3 points, which represents a reduction of 5.9 percent.
In turn, the cumulative average for the first five months of fiscal year 2021, between July and November, is 114.2 or a drop of 7.1 percent, when compared to the same period in fiscal year 2020.
During November 2020, one of the four components of the IAE-BDE: cement sales, increased 4.3 percent. While non-agricultural wage employment, electricity generation and gasoline consumption showed declines of 7.3 percent, 2.6 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively.
These results were compared against the November 2019 figures.
Finally, when compared to October 2020, non-agricultural wage employment increased 0.2 percent, power generation 5.4 percent, gasoline consumption -13.4 percent, and cement sales went decrease by 7.8 percent.