Small and medium-sized businesses industrial They closed last year with a 12% drop. of its billing during the last quarter and also with a 3% drop of staff employed, compared to the same period of the previous year. Likewise, sales expectations for this year were also recorded in the first two months they were negative.
On the contrary, in companies software and IT services the numbers gave it to him on: in the last quarter of last year They had a 15% increase in turnover and also a 4% increase in staff. Even the entrepreneurs in this sector, one of the most dynamic in recent years, have maintained their expectations improvements in your billing.
Despite this very disparate situation, one sector clearly with negative numbers and the other with increasing sales and employment, in both sectors they expressed a significant increase in the level of business confidence during the first two months of the year. This is how it was recorded by Pyme Observatory Foundation (FOP) in its SME Business Confidence Index (ICEPyME).
This measure, on which the foundation depends Techint Group he has been in office for more than two decades more than 1,000 companies they highlighted small and medium-sized industries and services throughout the national territory a 57% increase of “positive expectations for the country” both among industrial and IT services SMEs.
In both sectors, expectations are also growing in the subcomponent “performance of the company itself” (12% among industrial companies and 16% among IT services companies).
Despite a negative streak spanning the entire last quarter of last year and the first months of 2024, there is an increase in business confidence in both manufacturing SMEs surveyed medium (50-249 employed), as in little (10-49 employed).
Where do they go differences falls among the “sensitive” sectors a import opening like entrepreneurs in the sector textiles, clothing and footwear (where the increase in confidence was only 4%) while that of machinery and equipment entrepreneurs grew by 35% and those in the chemical sector by 22%. This despite the decline in turnover in the textile, clothing and footwear sector (-7%) being much more attenuated than in the metalworking sector (-16%) and the chemical sector (-17%).
“This dissociation in the industrial sector between the negative evolution of real turnover and the positive evolution of business confidence, This is a strange phenomenon that will need to be followed closely in the coming quarters“we read in the report of the body chaired by the economist Vicente Donato. “It is the first time that, in the long statistical series of FOP indicators, the phenomenon of a decline in the production indicator and a simultaneous increase in the Business Confidence Index in the industrial sector occurs in such a drastic way,” the work added.
Source: Clarin
