An index of service industries ranging from banks to mobile phone retailers shrank at the slowest pace since October, VTB Capital said Friday.
The Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to 49.7 from 46.6 in April, VTB Capital said in an e-mailed statement. A reading below 50 indicates a contraction. The survey of 300 purchasing managers began in October 2001.
“Services companies mainly anticipate the sector growing in the next 12 months on the back of easier access to credit and a wider economic recovery,” Svetlana Aslanova, an analyst at VTB Capital, said in the report. “Further net job shedding indicates companies’ ongoing concern over cost inflation.”
The gauge of service industries continued to rebound from December’s record drop to 36.4. “Driving the continued fall in business activity in the service sector was a further drop in incoming new work,” the report said.
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