The President of the Economic Development Bank for Puerto Rico (BDE), Pablo Muñiz Reyes, released on Saturday the data on the Economic Activity Index (IAE) for November 2020.
The report shows a reduction of 6.8% compared to the previous year.
“In cumulative terms, the IAE-BDE average for 2019 was 122.6. This is evidence of an increase of 1.6% compared to fiscal year 2020, the second consecutive annual increase after five years, with consecutive annual reductions. However, the accumulated average of IAE-BDE for the previous year ended at 119.6, which translates into a decrease of 2.0 percent compared to fiscal year 2019 “, said Muñiz Reyes in written statements.
This would be the ninth consecutive decline after 20 months of year-on-year increases.
Muñiz Reyes pointed out that the crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic has caused job losses and complicated the functioning of the health sector, which is why the Government is facing new challenges. These include the development of other strategies that encourage economic activity, investment in small and medium-sized enterprises to accelerate the recovery of displaced jobs.
The accumulated average of IAE-BDE for the period January-November of 2020 was 115.3 points, which represents a reduction of 5.9 percent.
In turn, the average accumulated for the first five months of fiscal year 2021, between July and November, is 114.2 or a decrease of 7.1%, compared to the same period of fiscal year 2020.
In November 2020, one of the four components of the IAE-BDE: cement sales, increased by 4.3 percent. While non-agricultural wages, electricity production and gasoline consumption decreased by 7.3 percent, 2.6 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively.
These results were compared with the figures for November 2019.
Finally, compared to October 2020, non-agricultural wages increased by 0.2 percent, electricity production by 5.4 percent, gasoline consumption -13.4 percent, and cement sales fell by 7.8 percent. one hundred.