In the seasonally adjusted series, the reduced pace of the industrial output in Brazil between March and April was registered in seven out of the 14 places surveyed, highlighted by the steepest drops recorded in Rio de Janeiro (-4.2%) and Rio Grande do Sul (-3.0%). Both places posted the second consecutive negative rate, registering a cumulative loss of 5.2% in the former and of 6.4% in the latter. The other places that recorded negative rates also posted more intense drops than the overall average (-0.3%): Minas Gerais (-1.8%), Pernambuco (-1.8%), Santa Catarina (-1.6%), Amazonas (-1.6%) and Paraná (-0.4%). On the other hand, Espírito Santo (4.7%) and Goiás (4.1%) reported the highest increases in April. The former place registered a cumulative gain of 7.3% along two consecutive months of positive rates, and the latter, advanced 10.1% in the last three months. São Paulo (1.7%), Bahia (0.9%), Pará (0.8%), Ceará (0.6%) and the Northeast Region (0.6%) were the other places that increased the production in April 2014.

Short-term Indicators of Industry
Regional Results
April 2014

Still concerning the seasonally adjusted series, the evolution of the quarterly moving average index for the overall industry pointed to a negative change of 0.2% in the quarter ended in April against the level of the previous month, after advancing 0.7% last March, when it halted the downward trend started in October last year. In regional terms, still in relation to the movement of this index on the margin, five places recorded negative rates: Rio de Janeiro (-1.7%), Rio Grande do Sul (-1.3%), Minas Gerais (-1.0%), Paraná (-0.8%) and Pernambuco (-0.2%). On the other hand, Goiás (3.3%), Pará (2.2%), Bahia (1.9%), the Northeast Region (1.2%), Amazonas (0.9%), Santa Catarina (0.6%), Espírito Santo (0.5%), São Paulo (0.5%) and Ceará (0.3%) posted positive figures in April 2014.

In the comparison with the same month a year ago, the overall industrial sector declined 5.8% in April 2014, registering negative figures in the majority of the areas, once 11 out of the 15 places surveyed dropped the production. It is worth mentioning that April 2014 (20 days) had two working days less than in the same month last year (22). In April, the most intense declines were reported in Paraná (-11.8%), Rio Grande do Sul (-10.3%) and São Paulo (-8.3%), pressed, at a large extent, by the reduced manufacturing of the sectors of motor vehicles, trailers and bodies (cars), food products (cakes, bagasses, bran and other residues from soybean oil extraction and VHP sugar) and machinery and equipment (farm tractors, harvesters, farm machinery and appliances for dispersing or spraying and trailers and semi-trailers for agricultural use), in the first place; other chemicals (unsaturated ethylene, unsaturated propene, polypropylene and linear polyethylene), tobacco products (processed tobacco and cigarettes), leather, travel articles and footwear (women’s leather footwear), machinery and equipment (trailers and semi-trailers for agricultural use, seeders, planters or spreaders and farm tractors) and beverages (wines), in the second; and motor vehicles, trailers and bodies (trucks, tractor trucks for trailers and semi-trailers, car pieces and cars) and machinery and equipment (valves, taps and cocks, ball bearings, needles, cylinders or rollers for industrial equipment, compressors, self-propelled stacker forklifts, elevators for transporting people, cranes, overhead travelling cranes and crane girders, backhoe excavators and farm tractors), in the last. Rio de Janeiro (-6.5%), Santa Catarina (-6.3%), Minas Gerais (-4.9%), Ceará (-4.5%), Goiás (-2.5%), Espírito Santo (-2.0%), Amazonas (-0.6%) and Bahia (-0.5%) were the other places which recorded negative rates. Conversely, Pará (36.3%) and Mato Grosso (11.6%) registered the steepest increases in April, particularly leveraged by the positive behavior in the sectors of mining and quarrying (crude iron ore), in the former place, and of food products (cakes, bagasses, bran and other residues from soybean oil extraction and crude soybean oil), in the latter. It is worth highlighting the influence of the low comparison basis in April for both places, since Pará (-24.1%) and Mato Grosso (-5.6%) recorded the most intense negative figures in April 2013. In addition, Pernambuco (3.3%) and the Northeast Region (0.8%) posted more moderate positive rates in April 2014.

In the cumulative indicator for the first four months in 2014, against the same period last year, the reduced overall production reached eight out of the 15 places surveyed, five of them declining more than the industry average (-1.2%): São Paulo (-4.6%), Espírito Santo (-4.1%), Rio de Janeiro (-3.1%), Bahia (-1.6%) and Goiás (-1.4%). The other negative figures were registered in Paraná (-1.1%), Rio Grande do Sul (-0.6%) and Ceará (-0.3%). In these places, the lower dynamism was particularly influenced by factors related to the reduced manufacturing of capital goods (especially those oriented to transportation equipment - tractor trucks for trailers and semi-trailers, trucks and vehicles for transportation of goods), intermediate goods (car pieces, textiles, steel products, fabricated metal products, basic petrochemicals, thermoplastic resins and pesticides) and durable consumer goods (cars, white goods and furniture). On the other hand, Pará (13.0%), Mato Grosso (8.2%), Amazonas (7.3%), Pernambuco (7.2%), the Northeast Region (2.0%), Minas Gerais (1.6%) and Santa Catarina (0.1%) registered positive rates in the cumulative index in the first four months of the year.

By advancing 0.8% in April 2014, the annualized rate - cumulative indicator in the last 12 months - posted a clear reduction in the growth pace over last March (2.1%). In regional terms, 12 out of the 15 places surveyed recorded positive rates in April this year, 13 of them showing less dynamism than the index last March. The major losses between March and April were registered in Rio Grande do Sul (from 7.7% to 5.4%), Paraná (from 4.5% to 2.4%), Ceará (from 9.5% to 7.6%) and São Paulo (from 1.7% to 0.0%), whereas Pará (from -0.1% to 4.1%) and Mato Grosso (from 4.2% to 5.7%) reported an advance between the two periods.

Industrial Output Indicators - Regional Results

Cumulative Index in the Last 12 Months
(Base: Previous last 12 months)