According to IODE-PMEs, the Commerce sector sustains the sector's performance with growth of 8.4%;
Industry and Services SMEs show decline
The Omie SME Economic Performance Index (IODE-PMEs) shows an increase of 1% in the financial movement of Brazilian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in August 2024, compared to the same month of the previous year. In the year to date, the sector shows an expansion of 4.9% compared to the same period in 2023.
Figure 1: IODE-SMEs
(Index number – base: average 2021=100)
Source: IODE-PMEs (Omie)
IODE-PMEs works as an economic thermometer for companies with annual revenues of up to R$1,405 million, divided into 701 economic activities that make up four major sectors: Commerce, Industry, Infrastructure and Services.
Felipe Beraldi, economist and manager of Indicators and Economic Studies at Omie, a cloud-based management platform (ERP), explains that the development of SMEs in August 2024 was heterogeneous, with emphasis on Commerce, which led the expansion (+8.4%), after having already advanced 19% in the previous month. “Positive signs persist in the country's economy, such as the solidity of the labor market and the increase in average real household income, which have kept consumption at high levels, boosting the performance of SMEs in this sector,” he comments.
Furthermore, the number is explained by the weak comparison base for the second half of 2023 (-11.2%). The evolution has been observed both in wholesale (+22%) and in retail (+7%), which reinforces the positive turnaround in the sector in recent months and increases expectations for Black Friday, an important seasonal date for sales in the second half of the year.
Industrial SMEs, on the other hand, saw a drop of 3% in August. “It is important to emphasize that this movement may be an isolated event, since the sector's basis for comparison is considerably high. In the same period last year, growth was 25.6%,” Beraldi ponders. In any case, in August, there was a positive performance in the activities of 'Printing and reproduction of recordings', 'Furniture manufacturing' and 'Manufacture of electrical machines and appliances' – which restricted more abrupt drops in the segment.
In the Services sector, SMEs also recorded a slight contraction, -1.3% compared to the same period last year, after a robust performance in July (+6.2%). During this period, the sector's performance was uneven across categories, with growth particularly in 'Administrative Activities' and 'Delivery Activities'.
Finally, SMEs in the Infrastructure sector maintained stable real financial activity (+8.6%), after having advanced in the previous month, with emphasis on the 'Collection, treatment and disposal of waste' segment.
Despite the more restrained result for the month, according to the economist, it is still too early to point to a possible change in the economic activity trend of Brazilian SMEs. “It is a fact that the market expects some slowdown in the economy in the second half of the year. However, the strong performance of the domestic economy recorded in the second quarter (growth of 3.3% in the annual comparison) and the continued buoyant labor market are important signs that SMEs can maintain a robust growth in the short term”, he predicts.
About the Omie Index of Economic Performance of SMEs (IODE-PMEs)
Understanding the relevance of SMEs in the economic performance of our country, Omie developed the Omie Index of Economic Performance of SMEs (IODE-PMEs), which monitors the economic activities of small and medium-sized Brazilian companies. The survey by the Omie scale-up is an unprecedented type of survey among companies in the segment, acting as an economic thermometer for companies with annual revenues of up to R$1,400,000, in addition to offering a segmented analysis of the SME market in Brazil by sector. To prepare the indexes, Omie analyzes aggregated and anonymized data on financial transactions of accounts receivable from more than 150,000 customers, covering 678 CNAEs (out of 1,332 existing subclasses) – considering statistical representativeness filters. The data are deflated based on the IGP-M (FGV) openings, based on the index in force in the last month of analysis, with the aim of eliminating the merely inflationary effect in the time series, allowing the evolution of financial movements to be observed in real terms.
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