Turnover in services

The turnover in services index measures the quarterly evolution of sales by service sector enterprises at current prices. Since the first quarter 2018 indices are calculated with reference to the base year 2015 using the Ateco 2007 classification (Italian edition of NACE Rev.2).

In the first quarter of 2020 the seasonally adjusted services turnover index decreased by 6.2% compared to the previous quarter. In particular the index decreased in accommodation and food service activities (-24.8%), transportation and storage (-6,4%), Wholesale trade, trade and repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (-6.0%), administrative and support service activities (-2.0%), information and communication (-0.9%) and professional, scientific and technical activities (-0.4%).

In the first quarter of 2020 the services turnover index decreased by 7.2% compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. In particular, the index decreased by 24.1% for accommodation and food service activities, by 7.8% for wholesale trade, trade and repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, by 5.3% for transportation and storage, by 2.8 for administrative and support service activities, by 2.6% for professional, scientific and technical activities and by 2.4% for information and communication activities.

The pandemic emergency impacted on the data collection of the survey and a moderate loss in the responses rate was registered. Strategies implemented to deal with the missing responses allowed to calculate and release accurate indices for first quarter 2020 (for further details see Methodological note, page 14)