Consumer confidence in Portugal has suddenly dropped to levels below those recorded at the start of the pandemic.
The confidence of businesses too has been seen to fall, though not by quite so much.
These are the latest findings by statistics institute INE, which has suggested that consumers particularly are more pessimistic in terms of the way they see the country’s economy developing.
“The evolution in the last month resulted in a negative contribution to expectations relating to the future evolution of the economic situation of the country”, says the institute – explaining that expectations “diminished significantly in July after expressive increases registered between March and May, and a slight reduction observed in June.”
Pessimism over the ‘financial situation of families’ was cited as one of the reasons for July’s drop in consumer confidence: meaning families are worried ‘things will get worse’.
As for businesses, the fall in confidence was “transversal”: from the transformation industry, to construction/ public works/ commerce and services.
Adds Expresso, in spite of having appeared ‘immune’ to the effects of the pandemic in the early days, all indicators show that confidence in construction/ public works is now the only sector running at a level below that observed in March 2020.
