National industry
Industrial output changes by -0.2% in November, sixth negative result in a row
January 06, 2022 09h00 AM | Last Updated: January 06, 2022 11h19 PM
The output of industry reached -0.2% from October to Novemner 2021, and recorded the sixth consecutive month of negative results, a period marked by a cumulative decrease of 4.0%. Despite having had a cumulative increase of 4.7% in the 11 months of 2021 against the same period a year ago, industry is more distant from pre-pandemic levels every day. These are the results of the Monthly Survey of Industry - PIM, released today (January 06th) by the IBGE.
“When we look at the previous year, the results throughout 2021 are almost entirely positive, since the basis for comparison is low, and in the beginning of the pandemic industrial activity was interrupted, causing the year 2020 to close at a 4.5% low. However, in a month-on-month analysis, we see that among the 11 results in 2021, nine were negative. That means industry is still facing difficulties, being now 4.3% below the production level registered before the pandemic, in February 2020,” says André Macedo, manager of the survey.
He recalls the sector is still under the effects of the pandemic and that has led to scarcity of inputs and consequently increased production costs.
“Also, industry is affected by high interests and low demand, an impact of high inflation and the precarious current working conditions since, with lower earnings, workers consume less,” Mr. Macedo explains.
Considering the negative result in November 2021 against October, a positive figure was observed in only one of the four major economic categories
“The production of capital goods fell 3.0% and made up for the increase of 1.8% observed in October. Semi and non-durable goods and intermediate goods were leveled-off and accounted for 80% of the industry average; for that reason, thegeneral average is close to stability. The secor of durable consumer goods recorded the only positive rate, 0.5%,” Mr. Macedo says.
He also highlights that industrial subsectors had a different movement from that observed in almost the entire year of 2021.
“A little less than half, twelve of the 26 subsectors surveyed recorded negative results. That is different from what we had been observing, that is, more activities with negative than positive results,” Mr. Macedo highlights.
Among the activities, the main negative contributions were those of rubber and plastic material (-4.8%), which lost all the cumulative increase (3.5%) reached in September and October and basic metals (-3.0%), which recorded the third decrease in a row with loss of 7.7% in the period.
Compared with November 2020, the industrial sector retreated 4.4% in November 2021, with negative figures in three of the four major economic categories, 19 out of 26 sectors, 55 out of 79 groups and 59.1% of the 805 products surveyed. It is worth mentioning that November 2021 had the same number of business days (20) as the same month a year ago (20).
In the cumulative index in the year, against the same product a year ago, industry increased by 4.7%, with positive results in all the major economic categories, 18 of the 26 subsectors, 55 of the 79 groups and 65% of the 805 products surveyed.
More about the survey
A PIM Brasil has been producing short-term indicators since the 1970s regarding the behavior of the real product from mining and quarrying and manufacturing industries. The release of a new series of monthly industrial production indices began in May 2014, after a reformulation to: update the sample of activities, products and respondents; prepare a new weighting structure for the indices based on the most recent industrial statistics, in order to harmonize with the needs of the implementation the National Accounts Series - reference 2010; and to adopt the new classification of activities and products used by other industry surveys from 2007 onwards, namely: the National Classification of Economic Activities - CNAE 2.0 and the List of Industrial Products - PRODLIST-Industry.
The survey results are also available at the Sidra database.
