Economic activity fell 3.7% in November year-on-year

Economic activity contracted 3.7 percent in November 2020 year-on-year, the INDEC national statistics bureau revealed Tuesday.

The data means that activity slumped by 10.6 percent in the first 11 months of 2020, when compared to 2019, mainly as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, activity did rise 1.4 percent in November from the previous month, slightly better than the one-percent growth predicted by analysts.

The sectors with the steepest contractions seen in November were hotels and restaurants (down 53.2 percent year-on-year), community services (down 21.5 percent) and transport and communications (down 18.2 percent).

The highest increases were registered in financial services (up 11.7 percent) and manufacturing (up 3.7 percent), with only four of 15 sectors registering improvements.

Argentina’s economy, in recession since 2018, is slowly recovering after one of the world’s strictest lockdowns was imposed to tackle the spread of Covid-19 in mid-March.

The International Monetary Fund forecasts that gross domestic product slumped by 11.8 percent in 2020 overall, while predicting a recovery of 4.9 percent for this year.