The ECB’s dialogue with non-financial companies
Prepared by Catherine Elding, Richard Morris and Michal Slavik
As part of the process of gathering information on the outlook for economic activity and prices, the ECB maintains regular contacts with non‑financial companies. This gathering of business intelligence has become more structured over time and tends to be particularly valuable during exceptional periods, such as those resulting from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Therefore, starting with this issue of the Economic Bulletin, the ECB will provide a summary of the main findings from its contacts with leading euro area businesses. This article explains how these interactions contribute to the ECB’s economic analysis and how they are organised and summarised. The main findings from the most recent exchanges with companies, which took place in early January 2021, are summarised in Box 1.