October 7, 2014

In August, industrial production shrank a seasonally-adjusted 4.0% over the previous month, contrasting July’s revised 1.6% expansion (previously reported: +1.9% month-on-month). The print marked the largest drop since January 2009 and came in below the 1.5% contraction that market analysts had expected. August’s decline reflected shrinking output in manufacturing, construction as well as electricity and energy supply. Mining and quarrying was the only category that recorded a gain.



Compared to the same month last year, industrial production lost the ground recovered in August and swung from a 2.7% rise to a 2.8% contraction in September. Consequently, the trend now points downwards as annual average growth in industrial production fell from 2.4% in July to 2.1% in August.

Forecasters polled by FocusEconomics expect that industrial production will expand 2.3% in 2014, which is down 0.5 percentage points from last month’s forecast. For 2015, the panel sees industrial production increasing 2.6%.