TIRANA (Albania), April 12 (SeeNews) – Albania’s economic confidence indicator increased by 3.7 percentage points to 117 points in the first quarter of 2018, after decreasing by 3.9 percentage points in the previous quarter, the country's central bank said.
The rise in the economic confidence indicator over Q4 2017 reflected improvement in the confidence indicators in trade (by 6.8 percentage points), services (by 3.6 pp) and industry (by 2.4 pp), Bank of Albania said in its quarterly business and consumer confidence survey.
Unlike those sectors, the confidence in the construction sector decreased in the first quarter.
The rise in the industry confidence indicator reflected improvement of its three constituent balances: production (by 4.8 pp); stock of finished products (by 1.5 pp); and order books ( by 0.9 pp).
The improved trade confidence indicator reflected the higher levels in the balances forming the indicator, business activity development (by 7.0 pp), and employment expectations one quarter ahead (by 6.6 pp).
The improvement in the services confidence indicator reflected the increase in the balance of demand, by 8.5 percentage points.
Construction confidence indicator continued to fall during the first quarter of 2018, decreasing by 1.4 pp over the previous quarter. The drop in Q1 2018 was due to the decline in order books by 2.8 pp, whereas the other balance of the indicator, construction activity, remained little changed from the previous quarter.
The consumer confidence indicator fell for the second consecutive quarter in Q1 2018, by 1.6 pp.
The confidence surveys of businesses and consumers are conducted by the Bank of Albania every three months, starting from 2002. Their results are used to supplement the data forwarded by the official statistics and the periodic analyses of the Department of Monetary Policy, in forming the foregoing indicators as well as short-term forecasting models of economic growth.
The methodology of conducting confidence surveys is timely updated in alignment with the methodology of other more developed countries and with the unified methodology of the European Commission (EC).
Starting from May 2016, the Bank of Albania started the organization of these surveys under the EC programme for the Harmonization of the Consumer and Business Confidence Surveys for member and candidate countries of the European Union.