A question in everyone’s mind is whether the economy has picked up? Various economic indicators give an indication that things are better but there are issues in interpretation. For example, the PMI increasing only reflects that the companies surveyed feel they are better off in a month relative to the previous month, which is to be expected as the economy opened up. Year-on-year growth numbers would tend to be lower, but they do not capture the essence of things looking better progressively compared with the previous months. This is significant today because April and May were periods of extreme lockdown where there were severe limitations on both production and consumption.
