In March this year, manufacturing industry’s production was at the same level as in March last year and which causes concern regarding the GDP growth in the remaining quarters – said the editor of the renowned Macroeconomic Analysis and Trends (MAT) magazine, Ivan Nikolic .
At the presentation of the new issue of MAT, he added that the stagnation in the manufacturing industry was compensated by the 21.6 percent growth of the production of the electric power industry, which is why industrial production continued to grow by 4.1 percent in March compared to the same period last year.
“The extremely high production growth recorded in the electric power industry was achieved in relation to the low level of production due to a standstill in January last year,” Nikolic said.
He added that, following the good results achieved in January and February, both import and export grew slower, with import growing faster.
Nikolic also outlined that the GDP growth, in the first quarter of this year, which according to the initial estimate was 4.5 percent, was mostly due to the three-times faster implementation of capital investments, and the growth in construction industry, industrial production and service sector.
MAT’s co-owner Stojan Stamenkovic said that, in March, industry recorded a decline, and that in the first quarter of 2018, six economy segments had negative growth rates.
“It’s not clear what is happening to the pharmaceutical industry after the extremely rapid growth last year. The decline is noticeable in the production of basic pharmaceutical products, not in the segment of pharmaceutical remedies, and I wonder if it all has to do with the privatization of Galenika,” Stamenkovic said.
He added that industrial production last year grew at a rate of 0.6 percent a month, or about seven percent annually, and now the growth stands at about 0.2 percent a month.
(N1, 09.05.2018)
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