HANOI: Month-on-month growth of the country’s index of industrial production (IIP) in January stood at 5.9 per cent due to a decline in consumption in both, domestic and export markets. According to the General Statistics Office (GSO), the rise remained lower than that in the past years, excluding January last year, when the index slid 2.8 per cent.
The GSO experts attributed the slowdown to a decrease in demand which caused the consumption index of the processing and manufacturing industry, which accounts for 70 per cent of the total national industrial output, to increase only 11.9 per cent, down 0.7 per cent against the previous month.
Besides, a long New Year holiday in January also caused a slowdown in domestic production, the experts said. In January, power production and distribution posted the highest increase of 13.2 per cent, followed by the processing and manufacturing sector with 8.2 per cent.
However, the month saw production in the mining industry decline 4.2 per cent. Exploitation and production of crude oil alone, the main staple of the mining industry, declined 8.5 per cent due to a plunge in oil prices in the world market.
In the manufacturing sector, production of mobile phones and motorcycles was also down nearly 11.5 per cent. However, some industries still reported high growth in January. These included automobiles at 39.9 per cent, television at 26.2 per cent, steel products at 21.3 per cent and animal feed at 18.4 per cent.
Other products that witnessed high growth of between 10 per cent and 15 per cent were beverages at 15 per cent, iron products at 14.1 per cent, textiles at 12.1 per cent, and processed seafood at 11.3 per cent.
The IIP slowdown in January also contributed to lowering the inventory index to 9.2 per cent by January 1, 2016, down against the rate of 9.5 per cent on December 1, 2015. Production of beverages and electronic products reported the highest inventory with a rise of up to 95.7 per cent and 89.5 per cent, respectively.
Despite the IIP slowdown in the first month of this year, many businesses in the processing and manufacturing industry have been more optimistic about this year prospects thanks to improvement in the final months of last year, a GSO survey recently released.
