Monthly Industrial Production Index decreases by 7.3% in February

The Industrial Production index (IPI) in the country amounted to 99.3 points in February 2021, decreased by 7.3% compared to the previous month (January 2021), and decreased by 2.1%, when compared to the corresponding month in 2020.

The Industrial Production Index consists of three main components: ‘Mining’ with a relative importance of 83.6%, ‘Manufacturing’ with a relative importance of 15.2%, ‘Electricity’ with a relative importance of 0.7%, and finally ‘Water’ with a relative importance of 0.5%.

It is a short-term quantitative index that measures the changes in the volume of productions of a selected basket of industrial products over a given period with respect to that in a chosen period called the base period.

The mining index showed a decrease by 7.7% compared to the previous month (January 2021), as a result of the decrease in the quantities of ‘crude oil petroleum and natural gas’ by 7.7%, while ‘Other mining and quarrying’ showed an increase by 0.8%.

When compared to the corresponding month of the previous year (February 2020), the IPI of Mining decreased by 1.6%.

The manufacturing index showed a decrease by 4.2% compared to the previous month (January 2021), however, an increase recorded in ‘Manufacture of rubber and plastics products’ by 1.7%. The groups showed a decrease include: ‘Manufacture of beverages’ by 9.5%, followed by ‘Manufacture of refined petroleum products’ by 9.1%, ‘Printing and reproduction of recorded media’ by 8.0%, ‘Manufacture of food products’ by 6.7%, ‘Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products’ by 3.7%,’Manufacture of Cement and other non-metallic mineral products’ by 3.3%, ‘Manufacture of basic metals’ by 1.2%.

On the other hand, in terms of annual change, comparing to February2020, a decrease of 4.0% was recorded, affected by the following groups: Printing and reproduction of recorded media by 82.4%, followed by ‘Manufacture of beverages’ by 23.5%, ‘Manufacture of food products’ by 8.8%, ‘Manufacture of basic metals’ by 8.7%, and ‘Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products’ by 5.1%.

However, an increase recorded in ‘Manufacture of Cement & other non-metallic mineral products’ by 16.6%, ‘Manufacture of rubber and plastics products’ by 10.7%, and ‘Manufacture of refined petroleum products’ by 5.3%.

A decrease of 10.3% was noticed in the production of ‘Electricity’ between February 2021 and the previous month (January 2021), while the annual decrease when comparing with February 2020, was 3.6%. (QNA)