Slovak industry slowed significantly at the beginning of the year, despite a double-digit growth in manufacture of vehicles
Industry, a key sector of the Slovak economy, recorded its first decline in six months. Despite a higher manufacture of vehicles, industrial production failed to stabilize. Its decrease was significantly affected by sharp declines in metal production, energy-related production, manufacture of machinery and equipment.
In January 2025, industrial production in the SR1) dropped by 5.2% year-on-year, returning to negative values after six months of growth. The decline in output was the most significant since March 2024 (with data for January 2025, data was also updated retrospectively in a long time series)2). Even at the beginning of the year, high growth in key sectors was offset by significant declines in other, also significant, industrial structures. In total, out of 15 monitored sectors3) 9 recorded a lower output year-on-year.
The most significant impact on industrial production in the first month of this year was the almost 17% decline in metal production. The contribution4) is an indicator that takes into account the rate of growth/decline in combination with the weight of the sector in the structure of the industry and hierarchizes the influences of individual sectors on the entire sector, this was an impact of - 2.97 percentage points (p.p.) on the sector´s result.
The second most significant impact on the result was the almost 18% year-on-year decline in electricity, gas, steam and air-conditioning supply (contribution -2.50 p. p.). The sector, which positively affected the Slovak industry for almost the entire previous year, showed a lower year-on-year performance after almost a year.
In third place in terms of overall importance was the almost 12% growth in the crucial manufacture of transport equipment (contribution +2.45 p. p.), which thus prevented an even more significant decline in the entire industry.
Industry was also dragged down in the first month of this year by an almost 19% decrease in manufacture of machinery (contribution -1.55 p. p.) and manufacture of electrical equipment also slowed down by more than 10% (contribution -0.65 p. p.).
On a month-on-month basis (compared to December 2024) seasonally adjusted, industrial production decreased by 7.3%
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