Qatar’s industrial production saw robust gains in April 2018, both on yearly and monthly basis, mainly on the back of stronger hydrocarbons and manufacturing sectors, according to official estimates.
The country's Industrial Production Index (IPI) reported a 1.4% and 1.5% increase year-on-year and month-on-month respectively in April this year, the figures released by the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) showed.
The ministry introduced IPI, a short-term quantitative index that measures changes in the volume of production of a selected basket of industrial products over a given period with respect to a base period 2013.
The mining and quarrying index, which has a relative weight of 83.6%, reported a 1.1% jump year-on-year in April 2018, owing to a 5.9% increase in other mining and quarrying activities and 1% in the extraction of crude petroleum and natural gas.
On a monthly basis, the index showed a 1.7% jump as the extraction of crude petroleum and natural gas grew 1.6% and other mining and quarrying by a marginal 0.7%.
The manufacturing index, with a relative weight of 15.2%, showed a 4.6% increase year-on-year this April on account of a 39.7% expansion in the manufacture of refined petroleum products, 10.3% in food products, 9.1% in basic metals, 6.3% in beverages and 6.2% in rubber and plastics products.
However, there was a 2.8% decline in the manufacture of cement and other non-metallic mineral products, 2.6% in printing and reproduction of recorded media and 2.1% in chemicals and chemical products.
On a monthly basis, the manufacturing index rose 1.2% on an 8.5% increase in the manufacture of beverages, 6.8% in refined petroleum products and 1.9% in chemicals and chemical products; whereas there was 9.3% plunge in the manufacture of basic metals, 5.7% in printing and reproduction of recorded media, 3.2% in food products, 2.1% in cement and other non-metallic mineral products and 1% in rubber and plastics products.
Electricity, which has 0.7% weight in the IPI basket, saw a 16.4% plunge on a yearly basis but reported an 8.7% growth on a monthly basis. In the case of water, which has a 0.5% weight, there was an 11.9% and 2.2% shrinkage year-on-year and month-on-month basis respectively.
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