ZURICH (MaceNews) – Economic confidence in the countries sharing the Euro rose unexpectedly in October, up 0.8 points to 118.6 from 117.8 in September, according to the latest date from the European Commission.
Economists had been expecting a pullback in sentiment according to the median forecast of 117.1 in an Econoday survey of economists’ forecasts.
In the European Union, confidence also rose, driven by improved confidence in services and construction and also retail trade. At the same time, it was lower among consumers and mostly unchanged in industry, the Commission said.
Among the major European economies, four out of five saw gains, with Spain up 2.5 points followed by France +2.1, Italy +1.8 and the Netherlands +1.4. In Germany sentiment weakened by 0.5 points.
The Commission also released an Economic Uncertainty Indicator (EUI) which declined 0.1 points to 14.0 in October.
“The flat trend resulted from two opposing forces in the underlying sectoral uncertainty measures. On the one hand, uncertainty increased among industry managers, potentially associated with growing bottlenecks due to the shortage of certain input components and raw materials as well as among consumers,” the report said.
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