Down by 0.3%, industrial production has second negative rate in a row
October 02, 2018 09h00 AM | Last Updated: October 03, 2018 10h20 AM
Brazilian industrial production fell by 0.3% from July to August this year, according to data from the Monthly Survey of Industry (PIM-PF), released today by the IBGE. This was the second consecutive month of negative behavior, accumulating a loss of 0.4% in the period. The manager of the survey, André Macedo, highlights that two consecutive drops in production have not been recorded by the industry since the end of 2015.
"In the time series of the industry, one can see that whenever there is a downward movement, it is offset somehow with growth in the following month. From September to December 2015, there were not two consecutive months of negative results. In 2015, there were four months of decline, with a drop of 6.4%. Of course, the total lost was higher than the two months' result now, which was very close to stability," he explains.
André Macedo also indicates that, with the latest results, industrial production is back to the level of April 2018. "Even with these two downward movements very close to the margin, industrial production lies exactly at the same level as it was before the truck drivers' strike, which influenced both the negative result in May and the positive result in June," he points out.
After eight months in 2018, the industry is 1.1% below December last year. For André Macedo, the production pace is affected by factors such as as the domestic demand still to be recovered, the great amount of workers out of the workforce, and also by the foreign maket issues, as, for example, exports to Argentina, which is an important partener to Brazil.
“Uncertainties influence the desicions in family consumption and in investments by the business sector, which explains bery well the industrial behavior at this moment", he says.
As to the time series' peak, reached in May 2011, the production in August stood 14.3% below it.
More than half of the activities had negative results
Of the 26 activities surveyed, 14 dropped in the period from July to August 2018. The main negative behavior was petroleum products and biofuels (5.7%), which interrupted the sequence of positive results started in March. "This sharp drop was somehow influenced by the shutdown of an important refinery, which interrupted its production due to a fire," says Macedo.
Beverages (-10.8%), mining and quarrying (-2.0%) and food products (-1.3%) close the set of activities that most negatively impacted the August rate.
The main positive influences were motor vehicles (2.4%), pharmaceuticals (8.3%), computer equipment and electronic products (5.1%) and pulp, paper and paper products ( 2.0%).
