Key PR economic index drops again; 1.8% fall is second deepest of 2014

A key gauge of Puerto Rico’s economy posted another drop in September, marking nearly two years of decline and its second steepest decline in 2014.

The Government Development Bank’s Economic Activity Index for September was 124.9, reflecting a 1.8 percent year-over-year decline compared to the same month in 2013. That was the biggest drop year-over-year since the index plunged 2.5 percent in February. It edged 0.5 percent compared to August 2014, stopping a five-month skid month-over-month and pulling up from a 20-year low.

Total non-farm payroll employment for September 2014 averaged 916,300, an annual increase of 0.2 percent.

Cement sales for September, a key metric of construction activity, totaled 1.10 million bags, a year-over-year decrease of 9.7 percent.

Electric power generation for September 2014 totaled 1,795.2 million kWh, a year-over- year decrease of 5.3 percent.

The preliminary number for gasoline consumption in September 2014 was 85.1 million gallons, an 8.6 percent decrease from September 2013. The monthly gasoline consumption figures were revised from March to June 2014, which affected the level of the index.

The EAI closed fiscal 2014 (ended in June) down 2.9 percent compared to the previous fiscal year.

The EAI had returned to growth in December 2011 for the first time since Puerto Rico’s recession began in 2006. It showed small but consistent year-over-year gains for nearly a year before beginning to retreat again in December 2012.
By : KEVIN MEAD

Key PR economic index drops again; 1.8% fall is second deepest of 2014

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IMF Executive Board Discusses the First Assessment of Eligible Countries under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative

On December 21, 2005 the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) established the list of countries that qualify for debt relief from the Fund under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). Debt relief delivery, which could start as soon as January 3, 2005, is now conditional on getting the consents of all the contributors to the Subsidy Account of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) Trust, whose contributions help finance the Initiative. The MDRI will deliver debt relief from the Fund to qualifying members countries with an annual per capita income at or below US$380, and to countries above the threshold that have reached the completion point under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The implementation of the MDRI will reduce the external debt burden of a number of the world's poorest countries and will provide additional resources to help them reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Background The Executive Board appro...
Read more

Oil’s chaotic collapse deepens; stocks drop worldwide

Image
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices crumpled even further Tuesday, and U.S. stocks sank to their worst loss in weeks as worries swept markets worldwide about the economic carnage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The market’s spotlight was again on oil, where prices have plummeted because very few people are flying or driving, and factories have shut amid widespread stay-at-home orders. Global demand is set to drop to levels last seen in the mid 1990s. At the same time, oil producers can’t slow their production fast enough, and all the extra crude means storage tanks are quickly running out of room. The cost for a barrel of U.S. oil to be delivered in June plunged 43% to $11.57. That’s the part of the market that oil traders are focused on and trading most actively. For oil to be delivered next month, which is when storage tanks could top out, the cost of a barrel stood at $10.01. A day earlier, it fell below zero for the first time, meaning traders paid others to take oil off their hand...
Read more

Mapping Extreme Poverty Around the World A new report from the

Image
A new report from the  World Bank  just landed, finding that a record low of 10% of humanity now live in extreme poverty, down from 11% in 2013. But poverty rates aren’t anywhere close to equal between continents or even countries, as our new series of maps clearly demonstrates. The World Bank provides an in-depth explanation for its methodology, which you can find in Appendix A of the full report  here . We focused on the percentage of people in each country living below what the World Bank defines as extreme poverty, or $1.90/day. We’ll let the researchers defend this definition on their own, but there is one caveat to keep in mind. It can be extraordinarily difficult to collect reliable data from so many countries on a regular basis, and in fact we used the latest year in which numbers were available whenever possible. For example, in some of these maps we compare 2011 figures against 2015. In short, our maps provide the clearest possible apples-to-apples compa...
Read more