By Jorge Iorio
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina’s economic activity fell 3.7% in November against the same period a year earlier, the smallest decline since near the start of 2020 but a deeper drop than analysts had predicted as the South American grains producer slowly revives growth.
Argentina’s official INDEC statistics agency said on Tuesday that activity had also improved 1.4% in the month against October, as sectors hit by a long pandemic lockdown in the country since March last year slowly came back to life.
The annualized drop, while the best since February 2020, was however worse than analysts polled by Reuters had expected. They had forecasted an average decline of 2.8%. At the height of the pandemic lockdown in April activity had dropped over 25%.
In the first eleven months of 2020, the economic activity indicator dropped 10.6% compared to the same period in 2019.
(Graphic: Argentina: Economic green shoots?: https://graphics.reuters.com/ARGENTINA-ECONOMY/INDICATOR/nmovaobnlva/chart.png)
(Reporting by Jorge Iorio; Writing by Adam Jourdan)
