Press Release: January 2005: Business Climate Indicator in the euro area decreases slightly

Following its small improvement in December 2004, the Business Climate Indicator (BCI) for the euro area recorded a small decline of 0.04 points in January 2005. The indicator then stood at a value of 0.40, just above its November 2004 level. This slight change of the BCI was mainly driven by the weakening in the opinions of industry managers concerning the production expectations, stocks of finished products and production trend in the recent past. Although the two remaining components of the indicator, export and total order books, showed an improvement, this was not strong enough to offset the worsening of the first three components.