The performance of industry in September decreased year-on-year, but only slightly, automotive industry developed similarly as last year

The key sector of the Slovak economy, industry, had a similar year-on-year performance in September, the slightly negative value of its production was the lowest since the beginning of the year. Higher growth in manufacture of electronic equipment and metals significantly dampened the declines in most industrial structures, including automobile companies.

Industrial production¹⁾ of the SR decreased by 0.6% year-on-year in September. It was the sixth month of the year when the industry´s performance was lower than in the corresponding period last year. The development in the structures of the industry continued to fluctuate, a total of 15 monitored sectors (special industrial groupings)²⁾ recorded a year-on-year lower performance.

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Despite the fact that the entire industry dropped slightly year-on-year, the growth of two sectors had the most significant impact, which sufficiently dampened and covered the decline of several and proportionally more important sectors of the industry. The influence of sectors is expressed through the so-called contributions³⁾, which take into account the rate of an increase/decrease combined with the weight of the sector in industrial structure and enable the hierarchization of the effects of individual sectors, the September result most affected the growth in manufacture of electrical equipment by 9.4%, which was an impact of plus 0.74 percentage point (p.p.), also year-on-year increase in metal production by 6.6% (contribution +0.72 p.p.). The electricity, gas, steam and air-conditioning supply also showed a slight increase.

Of the special groupings of industries that had a lower performance than a year ago, the most significant were the declines in manufacture of rubber and plastic products by 5.7% (contribution -0.61 p.p.), followed by manufacture of machinery and equipment by 5% (contribution - 0.52 p.p.).

Double-digit declines were seen in other manufacture and installation of machinery, manufacture of coke and refined petroleum products, and manufacturing of textiles, apparel, and leather.

A significant decrease continued in manufacture of rubber and plastic products, in May at an even more dynamic pace of 16.2%. The influence of sectors is expressed through the so-called contributions³⁾, which take into account the rate of an increase/decrease combined with the weight of the sector in industrial structure and enable the hierarchization of the effects of individual sectors, this was an impact of minus 1.84 percentage points (p.p.) on the result of the sector.

The second most significant impact on the overall result was a decrease by almost 19% in manufacture of wood and paper products with a contribution of -0.64 p.p., manufacture of computer, electronic and optical products also continued to decrease, up to 26.7% in May, which represented a contribution of -0.54 p.p. After three months of growth, manufacture of basic metals and fabricated metal structures recorded a decrease by 3.1% (contribution -0.38 p.p.).

In general, decreases in performance in 9 out of 13 monitored groupings of industrial production sectors (special groupings)²⁾ of industry were not affected even by an increase in the most important sector, in manufacture of transport equipment, by 8.1% with a contribution of +2.11 p.p.. Increases were also recorded in three less significant sectors. Manufacture of electrical equipment reached slightly positive numbers of 3.9% (contribution +0.31 p.p.), manufacture of basic pharmaceutical products and preparations (contribution +0.11 p.p.) recorded year-on-year a decrease in performance by 11.4% and for the first time this year manufacture of chemicals and chemical products also recorded a rise of 2.5% (contribution +0.05 p.p.).

On a month-on-month basis (compared to April 2023), after taking seasonal effects into account, industrial production increased by 2.5%.

In terms of breakdown according to the main industrial groupings, production related to energy increased by 8.3% and production of capital goods by 2.7% year-on-year. The other components recorded a year-on-year decline, i.e. production of durable goods by 12.8%, production of intermediate consumption by 8.4% and production of non-durable consumer goods by 0.5%.

In total, for the five months of 2023, industrial production decreased year-on-year by 2.8%. The most significant impact was an increase in manufacture of transport equipment by 7.5% (contribution +1.89 p.p.), which was supported by more moderate increases in the other four sectors²⁾ of industrial production and this increase partly compensated for declines in most sectors of industry recording the most influential decrease in manufacture of rubber and plastic products by 10.6% (contribution -1.12 p.p.) and in manufacture of computer, electronic and optical products by 28.4% (contribution -0.69 p.p.).