The COVID-19 pandemic motivated the development of high-frequency composite indicators by several central banks and international institutions to monitor the evolution of economies in a timely manner. In this context, a daily economic indicator (DEI) was developed at the Banco de Portugal, aggregating high-frequency information that historically presents a better relationship with economic activity in Portugal. The DEI was used occasionally in 2020 and has been released weekly since the beginning of 2021.

Although in its genesis it was developed to monitor the evolution of economic activity in Portugal during the pandemic, with emphasis on the lockdown periods, the DEI has proved to be a useful tool to monitor the Portuguese economy in the post-pandemic period. In particular, the recent evolution of the DEI points to a slowdown in economic activity throughout the third quarter of 2022, especially from August onwards.

For more details, see Lourenço and Rua (2020), “The DEI: tracking economic activity daily during the lockdown”, Working Paper No 13, Banco de Portugal and Lourenço and Rua (2021), “The Daily Economic Indicator: tracking economic activity daily during the lockdown”, Economic Modelling, Vol. 100, July 2021, 105500.

Prepared by Nuno Lourenço and António Rua. The analyses, opinions and findings expressed above represent the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the Banco de Portugal or the Eurosystem. 

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