(Finance) – Istat estimates that the seasonally adjusted index of industrial production is increased by 4% in February 2022 on a monthly basis, compared to the -3.4% of the previous month and the + 1.4% expected by analysts. On the average for the December-February quarter, the level of production decreased by 0.9% compared to the previous quarter. The monthly seasonally adjusted index shows cyclical increases in all the main groupings of industries: positive changes characterize, in fact, consumer goods (+ 5.2%), intermediate goods (+ 3.5%), capital goods (+ 2.7%) and, to a lesser extent, energy (+ 0.9%).
Adjusted for calendar effects, the overall index as of February 2022 increases in trend terms by 3.3% (the calendar working days were 20 as in February 2021). The figure compares with the -2.7% of the previous month (revised from -2.6%) and with the + 0.7% expected by the market. Significant increases characterize consumer goods (+ 5.8%), energy (+ 4.5%), and capital goods (+ 2.8%); the growth for intermediate goods was more contained (+ 1.6%).
The sectors of economic activity that record the greatest trend increases are the manufacture of coke and refined petroleum products (+ 16.8%), industries textiles, clothing, leather and accessories (+ 11.7%) and the manufacture of computers and electronic products (+ 8.3%). Trend downturns are recorded in mining activities (-15%), in the production of basic pharmaceutical products and pharmaceutical preparations (-3.8%) and in the manufacture of rubber and plastic materials (-2.9%).
“In February, industrial production starts to grow again in economic terms, recovering a large part of the decline recorded in the previous two months – is the comment on the data of the National Statistics Institute – the comparison with the February 2020 value is also positivemonth before the start of the health emergency: the seasonally adjusted level of the February 2022 index is greater than 2.5% “.