The slowdown in GDP, which stagnated in the third quarter with a slight increase of 0.1% and which would remain weak in the final stretch of last year, and the rise in prices weakened company sales in November, in full campaign of ‘Black Friday’. This is confirmed by the data made public this Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). Its turnover increased by 13.5% in the penultimate month of 2022 in relation to the previous year, moderating by more than five points the rise registered in October, when it rose 19.1%, according to the Business Turnover Index ( ICNE).
Despite this slowdown, the rise in November, a month in which discounts for the ‘celebration’ imported from the United States have been traditional for several years, the sales of companies chained twenty-one consecutive months of year-on-year increases after a year in negative due to the impact of the restrictions to deal with Covid.
Corrected for seasonal and calendar effects, company turnover increased by 14.1% year-on-year last November, a rate that is still 5.2 points lower than that of October. In monthly values and within the corrected series, business invoicing occurred in November of last year with a decrease of 0.1%, in contrast to the fall of 1.6% experienced in October. Thus, sales will record two consecutive months of setbacks.
Of the four sectors analyzed in the survey, only Electricity and water supply, sanitation and waste management present negative monthly rates (−14.2%). On the contrary, Market non-financial services registers the greatest increase (4.7%), while the turnover of the extractive and manufacturing industries rebounds by 4% and that of commerce by 3% in relation to October.
Companies have faced an increase in production costs due to the sharp rise in the prices of raw materials and inflation in general, at the same time that since the summer they have faced an increase in financing costs due to increases in rates that have had to be applied by the European Central Bank (ECB) since July and that place the reference rate at 2.5%, its highest level since the last financial crisis. The Bank of Spain recently found that companies had only partly affected their final prices by all these cost increases, although they have been able to increase their income.
