The President of the Economic Development Bank for Puerto Rico (NDE), licensed public accountant Pablo Muñiz Reyes, released the data related to the Economic Activity Index (IAE) for October 2020, which reached a maximum of 115.5 points on Friday. month, a fact that represents an increase of 0.4% compared to the previous month.
Likewise, it represented a 6.4% decline from October 2019.
This would be the eighth consecutive decline after 20 months of year-on-year increases.
Muñiz Reyes stressed that the analysis period also includes the months in which the island suffered the effects of a magnitude 6.4 earthquake, followed by strong aftershocks, complicated by the subsequent state of emergency that was enacted for its severity and magnitude that characterizes the current COVID-19 pandemic.
“In cumulative terms, the IAE-BDE average for 2019 was 122.6,” he said. “This shows an increase of 1.6% over 2018, the second consecutive annual growth after five years with consecutive annual reductions. However, the cumulative average of the IAE-NDE for the fiscal year 2020 ended at 119.6, which is translates into a 2.0% decrease compared to the 2019 financial year (122.1 or + 6.1%).
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The accumulated average of the IAE-NDE for the period from January to October 2020 was 115.3 points, representing 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% compared to the same period of fiscal year 2020.
In October 2020, one of the four components of the IAE-BDE: cement sales rose 17.6%. While salaried non-agricultural employment, electricity generation and gasoline consumption decreased by 7.3%, 7.2% and 23.2% respectively.
These results have been compared with the figures for October 2019.
Finally, compared to the month of September 2020, non-agricultural salaried employment rose 0.3%, while the other components decreased: electricity generation -8.1%, gasoline consumption -9.1% and cement sales -0.1%.