A handful of sectoral activity indicators show that in October the economy could have started to reverse still timidly, two consecutive quarters of decline. The Government seeks to accelerate the reduction of interest rates to make credit and the daily financing of companies cheaper after the strong monetary squeeze that it carried out before the elections.
The economy arrived with critical numbers at the electoral period, among other reasons because the Executive Branch decided to take measures to stop the momentum of the dollar but which resulted in a rate escalation and one paralysis of activity in different sectors.
Estimates from private consulting firms reported in recent weeks that the July-September quarter would have ended with a fall, something that had also happened in the April-June section. Thus, technically the economy entered a recession. The official data have a greater lag and this Tuesday the Monthly Estimator of Economic Activity (EMAE) for September will be released.
The Capital Foundation estimate is that in the third quarter of the year the economy fell 0.8% in relation to the second, a calculation that was made according to the anticipated sectoral data. In the second quarter the fall had been smaller, 0,1%.
The most updated data is only sectoral but allows us to anticipate some general trend. The most recent available is October. The FIEL Foundation, on the one hand, indicated that this month the industry had a 0.3% recovery in relation to the previous month. The bad news is the year-on-year comparison: it was down 5.3%. And cumulatively since February, when the contraction trend began, the drop is 8.9%.
Within the industry there are disparate realities: in October there were improvements in the production of minerals but with strong setbacks in chemicals, plastics and automobiles. “The industry will close the year in declinewhile the leading sectors are expected to begin to emerge by 2026,” was one of FIEL’s conclusions. It also mentioned that the trade agreement with the United States will present “opportunities and challenges” for the sector in 2026.
Consumption also showed signs of some slight improvement in October. The consulting firm Scentia reported that that month mass consumption grew 2.2% compared to September. And the Consumer Confidence Index prepared by the Torcuato Di Tella University (UTDT) measured an improvement in the last month of 8.8% in the index that shows consumption expectations.
Construction also ended October with positive figures, which places it in a better position for the end of the year. He cement consumption rose 5.5% in October and thus I thread three consecutive months of improvement. It is still a very irregular sector, which moves in a “saw” shape: the Construya index, which measures the sector’s input sales, fell in October after an advance in September. During the last seven months the indicator did not maintain the trend of the previous month.
An index ahead of the national one is the one designed by Banco Provincia to reflect, with a smaller lag, the situation of economic activity in Buenos Aires. Through the PBA Pulse indicatorwhich even shows weekly activity trends, observed that October ended with an improvement of 0,3%. So far in 2025, however, there is a 0.5% drop.
“As of April 2025, the evolution of PulsoPBA shows a path of deceleration, which was interrupted towards the end of September and which would have shown some recovery in the tenth month of the year,” indicated the Buenos Aires public bank.
Beyond the last photo from October, a constant that the analyzes of the progress of the economy point out coincide in that two very marked realities are emerging according to each sector. “The Argentine economy, since the beginning of the stabilization process, has presented a markedly uneven evolution, consolidating a ‘winners and losers’ logic among its various sectors,” said Invecq.
According to that consultancy there is a “block” of winners (agriculture, energy, mining, financial intermediation) that are at an activity level 11% higher than November 2023, before the change of government. On the contrary, the losers (construction, industry, other services) are 9% below.