The confidence climate improved in January, both for consumers and for businesses. This was communicated by Istat, according to which in the month that is drawing to a close the composite index of the climate of consumer confidence increased significantly, passing from 104,0 to 99,9. As well as the composite index of the confidence climate of Italian companies, which shows an improvement, rising to 91,6 from 87,6 in December 2014.
For the consumer confidence climate, the economic component and that referring to the personal situation increased respectively to 109,2 from 103,5 and to 102,2 from 98,0 compared to the previous month. Consumers' opinions on the country's current economic situation improve (the balance to -104 from -108) and so do expectations (the balance to -5 from -15). The balance of judgments on the dynamics of consumer prices in the last 12 months decreased (to -22 from -5), that of judgments on the evolution of prices in the next twelve months (to -31 from -18) and that of expectations on unemployment (to 41 from 48).
With regard to businesses, the climate of confidence improves among market services firms (to 94,7 from 86,8) and construction firms (to 77,3 from 72,6), while that of manufacturing firms decreases slightly (to 97,1 from 97,3) and, to a greater extent, that of the retail trade (at 99,5 from 104,7).
