Industrial production contracts decline in February

ANKARA

Türkiye’s industrial output has declined by 8.2 percent in February from a year ago, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) have shown.

In the previous month, industrial production rose by 4.6 percent on an annual basis.

The industry’s sector production contracted by 6 percent month-on-month after rising 2 percent in January.

In manufacturing, output shrank by 6.6 percent month-on-month and 8.2 percent year-on-year. The mining and quarrying sector’s production fell 11.2 percent from January and dropped 18.2 percent compared with February 2022. Electricity and gas production increased by 1.4 percent in February from the previous month, but the annual decline in the sector’s output was 4.5 percent.

The headline Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose from 50.1 in February to 50.9 in March to signal a modest monthly improvement in business conditions in the Turkish manufacturing sector, a survey conducted jointly by the Istanbul Chamber of Industry (ISO) and S&P Global showed earlier this month.

Durable consumer goods production fell 4 percent year-on-year after rising 7.1 percent in the previous month, while non-durable consumer goods production was down 6.4 percent. The energy sector’s output, which dropped 5.8 percent in January, declined by another 8.5 percent on an annual basis in February.

The capital goods sector reported that its production grew by 4.5 percent year-on-year, which came on top of the nearly 19 percent increase in January.

The calculation of the industrial production index is based on the monthly industrial production survey and VAT declarations, TÜİK said in a statement.

“In the regions affected by the earthquake disaster in our country, force majeure was declared, and VAT declarations were postponed,” it furthered.

The response rate for the monthly industrial production survey in these regions was 67 percent, the statistics authority said.

“For this reason, alternative data sources such as e-invoice and e-archive invoice data were used to impute missing observations in the February 2023 calculations. The share of these estimated observations in the total is 1.94 percent,” the statement explained.