The President of the Economic Development Bank for Puerto Rico (BDE), the authorized public accountant Pau Muñiz Reis, published on Friday the data related to the Economic Activity Index (IAE) for October 2020, which reached a maximum level of 115.5 points this month, which represents an increase of 0.4% compared to the previous month.
It also represented a drop of 6.4% against October 2019.
This would be the eighth consecutive decrease after 20 months of year-on-year increases.
Muñiz Reis stressed that the analysis period includes the months from which the Island experienced the consequences of a magnitude 6.4 earthquake, followed by strong aftershocks, complicated by the subsequent state of emergency decreed due to the severity and extent that characterizes the current COVID-19 pandemic.
“In cumulative terms, the IAE-BDE average for 2019 was 122.6,” he stated. “This shows an increase of 1.6% against 2018, the second consecutive annual growth after five years with annual reductions in a row. However, the accumulated average of the IAE-BDE for fiscal year 2020 ended at 119.6 , which translates into a drop of 2.0% versus fiscal year 2019 (122.1 or + 6.1%).
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The cumulative average of the IAE-BDE for the period from January to October of the year 2020 was 115.3 points, which represents a reduction of 5.8%.
In turn, the accumulated average for the first four months of fiscal year 2021, between July and October, is 114.0 or a decrease of 7.1%, when compared to the same period of fiscal year 2020.
During October 2020, one of the four components of the IAE-BDE: cement sales, increased 17.6%. While non-agricultural wage employment, electricity generation and gasoline consumption showed declines of 7.3%, 7.2% and 23.2%, respectively.
These results were compared against the October 2019 figures.
Finally, when compared to September 2020, non-agricultural wage employment increased 0.3%, while the remaining components decreased: electricity generation -8.1%, gasoline consumption -9.1% and sales of cement -0.1%.