The data released for the first time since March showed that the composite index for business confidence for May sank to 51.1 points, the lowest level ever recorded in Italy. Confidence among consumers, a separate measure, dropped to 94.3 points, its lowest level since 2013.
ISTAT suspended measurement of business and consumer confidence in April as the country grappled with the coronavirus outbreak. Although both the indexes fell in March over the previous month, the drop between March and May took them to historical lows.
ISTAT said that every subcomponent of the indexes fell over the last two months.
For businesses, the service sector index lost nearly half of its value, dropping from 75.7 to 38.8. Retail sales fell from 95.6 to 67.8, while construction slid from 139.0 to 108.4. Manufacturing is the only sub-index that avoided a dramatic drop, with reading down from 87.2 to 71.2.
Among consumers, the results were more modest. Confidence in the economic climate dropped from 94.4 to 71.9, but other sub-indexes fell by less than 10 percent. And expectations about the future barely registered a drop, sinking from 93.3 to 93.1.
All of the indexes are based on surveys conducted with private companies or households and measured against baseline responses from previous months.
The responses come as Italy emerges from weeks of anti-virus lockdown. Impacted by the lockdown, Italy's economy is expected to contract by around 10 percent this year compared to consensus predictions of at least 0.5-percent economic growth before the pandemic hit Italy.
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