The volume of services provided in the country increased by 0.7% in August compared to July. The result comes after growth of 1.3% in the previous month and is the fourth consecutive increase. The accumulated gain in the period is 3.3%.
With this performance, the sector operates 10.1% above the pre-pandemic level, in February 2020. The data that integrate the Monthly Service Survey (PMS) show that the result was 0.9% below the highest level in the series historical record, recorded in November 2014. A survey by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) was released today (14).
In comparison with August of last year, the volume of the services sector registered an increase of 8%, being the eighteenth positive rate followed by this indicator, in the series without seasonal adjustment. The index accumulated in the year reached 8.4% and the index accumulated in the last twelve months changed from 9.6% in July to 8.9%.
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Among the five activities surveyed, three followed the positive result of the general index: other services, services provided to families and tourist activities. The highlights were other services (6.7%), which in the previous month, had a drop of 5% in volume, and information and communication activities (0.6%).
“This positive result comes after a fall, which is not uncommon especially in the auxiliary financial services sector, which had a greater influence on this advance and also on the retraction of the previous month”, commented the research analyst, Luiz Almeida.
Services provided to families grew by 1%, which represents the sixth consecutive month of growth. In this period, the accumulated gain is 10.7%. Even so, the sector is still 4.8% below the pre-covid level. According to the researcher, this can be explained by the fact that the sector was the most affected during the pandemic.
“With the return of face-to-face activities, the fall of restrictions and the decrease in unemployment, he has been reducing losses, but has not yet reached the level of February 2020. During the pandemic, the sector was about 67% below the its record level, reached in May 2014”, he said.
Also in August, the index of tourist activities rose 1.2%, the second consecutive positive result. The sector operates 0.1% above the pre-pandemic level. Minas Gerais (3.9%), São Paulo (0.6%) and Pernambuco (0.8%) were the three of the 12 places surveyed for this indicator that grew. The main declines were in Rio Grande do Sul (-6.0%) and Santa Catarina (-6.0%).
fall and stability
On the other hand, after three consecutive months of growth, transport dropped by 0.2% in August. “The transport sector had an accumulated increase of 4% between May and July and is 20% above the pre-pandemic level and 0.2% below the highest point in the series, which was precisely the previous month. This slight drop seems more like an accommodation in the sector”, he evaluated.
The segment of professional, administrative and complementary services remained stable and unchanged in the reference month, after a decline of 1.1% in July.
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According to the IBGE, the PMS produces indicators for Brazil and for all units of the Federation, “which make it possible to monitor the conjunctural behavior of the service sector in the country, investigating the gross revenue from services in formally constituted companies, with 20 or more employed persons, whose main activity is a service non-financial, excluding the areas of health and education”.
