Slovak industry slowed down even more, its April production fell by 9.4% year-on-year

The slowdown affects only a third of industries, but increases in manufacture of metal, rubber and oil processing and in most small industries has not been able to offset the continuing deeper declines in key manufacture of transport equipment, energy or important electronics and raw material extraction.

Industrial production¹⁾ fell by 9.6% year-on-year in April 2022, and a key sector of the economy was slower than a year ago for the third month in a row. Long-term comparison indicators offer an assessment of the actual state of performance of the sector at a time of different fluctuations during two years of pandemic responses. Currently, in April, the Slovak industry produced by 3.1% higher value than the average in the base year 2015. A year ago in April, it was up to by 14% higher value than the monthly average of 2015.

Overall, as for the total of 15 monitored industries (individual industrial groupings ²⁾, only 5 industries currently recorded a year-on-year decline in production in the fourth month of 2022, and 10 were growing, but the decisive structures of Slovak industry continued to decrease.

The current result was most significantly affected by a decrease in production in manufacture of transport equipment by 23.5% (contribution -5.80 percentage points / p.p. to the overall result of the sector ³⁾) and a decrease in electricity, gas and steam supply ⁴⁾ by 46% (contribution -4, 01 p.p.). A more significant decrease of 46% was also recorded in mining and quarrying (contribution -1.15 p.p.), manufacture of computers and electronics by 19.7% (contribution -0.64 p.p.).

On the other hand, an increase in manufacture of electrical equipment by 7.1% which contributed by a value of +0.50 p.p. to the total result and also a rise in manufacture of metals and metal structures by 4.1% with a contribution of +0.45 p.p. positively affected the result of industry in the fourth month. The performance of the industry was supported by more than a sixth increase in manufacture of coke and petroleum products, which was reflected in a contribution of +0.39 p.p. to the overall balance of industrial production. The year-on-year increase in production in smaller sectors of Slovak industry, such as manufacture of food and beverages or more dynamic growth in manufacture of textiles, clothing and leather also had a positive effect.

In terms of structure, according to the main industrial groupings, production related to energy fell by more than 20% year-on-year; a decline of more than 10% was also reflected in production of capital goods, consumer durable goods or intermediate consumption. On the contrary, production of consumer non-durable goods increased.

Month-on-month (compared to March 2022), after taking into account seasonal effects, industrial production decreased by 1.2%.

In summary, in the first four months of 2022, industrial production fell by 3.7% year-on-year. The dynamics of development was affected most significantly by a decrease in production in manufacture of transport equipment by 11% (contribution -2.83 p.p.), as well as a drop in energy by 18.4% (contribution -2.65 p.p.). Year-on-year increases in other industries also recorded positive contributions to the result at the level of half a percentage point, both in manufacture of electrical equipment and in manufacture of rubber and plastic products (contribution +0.48 p.p., growth by 5.1%).