The economy grew by 1.37% in January, what explains the positive result? | economy

Isaac Fonkinos, Macroconsult senior economist, pointed out that in January of last year, since GDP negative rates began to be recorded, the result is a good part due to the rebound effect; However, another area is responsible for the good momentum shown by public investment at the beginning of the year.

Regarding this, the Peruvian Institute of Economics (IPE) senior economist, Teodoro Crisolucian, admits that there is a part of the base effect, but in general, there is an improvement in the economy in January.

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“It remains to be seen whether this continued acceleration will be maintained for the rest of the first quarter, as it will create a higher-than-expected base for economic activity.”said.

From the IPE, they estimated a growth of 1.8%, and the result is a little lower than that estimate, but in the same way there is a trend of acceleration in some sectors that show that the economy is focused on the progress of construction, Crisolucion explained. , which has recorded significantly higher growth than seen in 2023 again.

However, the sector recorded a growth of 13.16%, lower than the 18% estimated by the IPE, where they explained that growth should be seen in a seasonally adjusted manner. With this, construction GDP increased by 2.2% in January.

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On the other hand, according to the INEI report, the annual result of the national product (February 2023 – January 2024) is -0.38%, according to Foinquinos, this result is due to the negative shocks of 2023 – protests, climate anomalies, high inflation, high interest rates, the entry of new subnational authorities, Quellaveco This is expected to be reversed in almost all cases – adjusting mine investment due to completion, normalizing AFP withdrawal costs from previous years, among others. 2024.

For his part, Chrysolucian noted that last year's recession was dragging on precisely.

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“In general, unless there are year-on-year improvements in the coming months, the annual figures will be far from returning to positive rates, but they will start to reverse.” said.

Therefore, he said, we will have higher growth in February than in January due to indicators like electricity consumption increased by 4.5% in February and public investment by the national government. positions. “As this recovery consolidates, we see the trend of the last 12 months gradually reversing the negative figures it has seen”he added.

Projection

Both IPE and Macroconsult estimate 2% growth in the first quarter of the year due to the January end, rebound effect or lower relative base compared to last year and an extra calendar day in February.

In December, IPE had a 1.3% growth in the first quarter, but that was revised upwards, according to estimates for the year, the figure of which will be shared next Tuesday.

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Of the 14 sectors analyzed by INEI, nine received positive results. In this regard, Chrysolucian noted that we are more likely to see continued upswing, especially in sectors that are highly linked to domestic demand, which was very stagnant last year.

“For example, investment-linked sectors were concentrated in negative territory for 13 months till December 2023. “We have seen the highest results of investment-linked sectors since April 2022. Our estimates accurately indicate that these sectors would have registered a growth of 5.6%”He said.

If we want to see signs of where the recovery is coming from, this will be a relatively positive trend, the IPE representative said.

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employment

INEI presented this Friday its report on the labor market in metropolitan Lima, where the unemployment rate remained high in the December – January – February quarter. In this regard, experts agreed, seasonally, there is always an increase in unemployment at the beginning of the year, because those are the months with the least economic activity.

As for Crisolucion, the public employment result shows that it maintains more dynamism than it showed at the end of last year, as it is increasing by 4.3% over the average recorded before the pandemic.

“The quality of employment should be a concern because a good portion of the growth, as the survey shows us, has been concentrated in these very low-income jobs. Unemployment grew by 7.3% in terms of income in this last moving quarter.said.