In July, the volume of services rendered in Brazil grew by 0.5% from the previous month. That is the third consecutive positive change, with an increase of 2.2% in the period. Three of the five activities surveyed recorded positive results, the highlight being transportation (-0.6%), which accounted for the main impact on the overall result. The data come from the Monthly Survey of Services (PMS), released today by the IBGE.

With the advance of July, the Transportation sector recovered from the negative change in the previous month (-0.4%). The main influence on the result of the sector came from cargo Transportation, which advanced by 1.4%, third positive rate in a row, with a cumulative increase of 5.8% in three months. As a result, cargo Transportation reached, once more, the peak of the time series. Among the activities that form the sector, Transportation of cargo was responsible for the hike in July.

“One of the reasons accounting for the growth of road transportation of cargo since the end of the pandemic is the change of perspective in relation to electronic trade, which boomed after the migration of physical shops to the electronic market. Nowadays this factor is second to the agricultural issue, since the LSPA has forecast a series of record harvests for corn and soybean. That increases the demand for cargo Transportation, both due to the flow of inputs, such as fertilizers, and to the very flow of agricultural products,” says Rodrigo Lobo, manager of the survey.

Services rendered to families (1.0%) had a cumulative increase of 4.9% between April and July. “The result of July is the fourth consecutive positive one in this activity. In the month, the main impacts came from the rise in revenues of restaurants, hotel and amusement parks, which usually Grow in periods When families are on vacation,” says the researcher. The sector of services rendered to families is the only one not to have surpassed the pre pandemic level. In July, it worked 1.7% below the level of February 2020, the lowest difference ever registered.

With this change in July, other services (0.3%) recovered part of the loss in the previous month (-0.4%). “This activity has presented changes very close to stability. The hike in July was driven by auxiliary financial services, which is the most important segment in terms of revenue,” Mr. Lobo says.

On the other hand, the activities investigated by the survey and that recorded negative results in July were professional, administrative and complementary services (-1.1%) and information and communication (-0.2%). As for the first sector, the decrease came after an increase of 1.1% in the previous month.

“The retreat in professional, administrative, and complementary services is mainly a result of the loss of revenue of companies of legal activities, which had risen in the previous month due to legal actions won. So, this decrease is related to that high basis for comparison. Other losses in the sector came from administrators of discount cards and loyalty programs, of companies that deal with business management consulting and cleaning services.”

Information and communication had a negative result for the second consecutive month. “This sector also changed by -0.1% in June, so there is a negative change of -0.3% in these two months, which is a very slight decrease. In July, the most influential sectors to the result were portals, Internet providers and search engines on the Internet, development and licensing of software and distribution of TV programs.”

In July, the services sector operated 12.8% above the pre-pandemic level, of February 2020, and 0.9% below the highest level in the time series. “In July, the sector reached the second highest level in the time series. What has been observed is that, in 2023, services have had, over the months, results very close to the peak of the series. So the forces observed within the sector last year are still in effect, such as cargo Transportation, due to the increase of agricultural production and of electronic, and information technology services, benefited by the search of companies that want to announce their goods and services in digital platforms.” says Mr. Lobo.

In the year, the sector of services had a cumulative increase of 4.5% against the same period a year ago. The cumulative index in 12 months was 6.0%.

The increase of volume of services in the country against the previous month was observed by 13 states, mainly Rio de Janeiro (1.4%), Goiás (5.6%), Bahia (2.9%), Mato Grosso (3.0%) and Ceará (3.3%). The main negative contributions came from the Federal District (-2.9%), São Paulo (-0.1%), Pará (-3.0%), Rio Grande do Sul (-0.6%) and Espírito Santo (-1.8%).

Tourism activities increase 0.7% in July

After the negative change of 0.1% in June, the index of tourism activities advanced 0.7% in the following month. |The segment is 6.2% above the pre-pandemic level and 1.4% below its highest level, of February 2014.

Nine of the 12 areas surveyed followed the movement of expansion and, among them, the highlights were São Paulo (4.2%), Bahia (4.4%), Rio de Janeiro (1.4%) and Rio Grande do Sul (1.9%). As for negative results, the main changes were those in the Federal District (-3.7%) and Espírito Santo (-4.4%).

Against July 2022, services grew by 3.5%

The services sector increased by 3.5% against the same period last year. The increase was spread among the five dissemination activities, with a highlight to the Transportation sector (2.5%), accounting for the main positive impact on the general result. The activity was driven by the increase of revenues of road cargo Transportation companies, air Transportation of passengers, inland cargo, storage, pipeline transportation and maritime and port support navigation.

The Other activities recorded the following results: information and communication (3.6%), professional, administrative and complementary services (3.2%), services rendered to families (4.9%) and other services (4.2%).

More about the survey

The PMS produces indicators to monitor the short-term behavior of the services sector in Brazil. The survey investigates the gross revenue from services in formal enterprises that employ 20 or more persons, in which the main activity is a non-financial service, excluding the areas of health and education. It produces results for Brazil and all the Federation Units. Results are available at Sidra.

This is the fifth release of the the new time series of the survey, which updated the sample of enterprises, as well as included methodological changes to portray economic changes in the society. They are updates already scheduled and periodically implemented by the IBGE. The next release of the Monthly Survey of Services will be on October 17.