Hungary Industrial Output May 2008 (updated)

(This post has been updated following release of the detailed figures, see foot of post).

Hungary's industrial output was up by 11.8% year on year in April, and by 6.7%,when the data is adjusted for working days (Easter was in March this year), the Central Statistics Office (KSH) reported this morning. This marks a significant increase after the last month's 4.3% working day corrected increase, which had been the weakest registered year on year growth since February 2005.

Industrial output grew by 8.1% yr/yr in the January-April period, up from 6.9% in Q1.

Following a 2.6% decline in March, output rose by 1.4% month on month in April, according to seasonally and working day adjusted figures.





Industrial output growth accelerated more than expected in April. The strong pick up is partly the result of one-off factors (two more working days), but the low base from last April also played a role. We need to be very careful in interpreting data from March/April due to the size of the Easter calendar effect.

Monthly adjusted data showed 1.4% growth in April, but this was not enough to fully compensate for March's 2.6% monthly drop in output. Despite the stronger than expected headline number, the details confirm that the industry is loosing some momentum, which is not a surprise given the global slowdown and still weak state of domestic demand.


Update

Hungary's industrial output increased at the confirmed rate of 11.8% year on year in April, according to unadjusted data and went up 6.5% year on year, according to figures adjusted for working days, according to revised data from KSH. The working day adjusted number was down slightly from the preliminary 6.7%.

The detailed figures show that the driving force behind industrial output growth are export sales, which were up by 2.1% month on month.

The volume of electrical and optical goods exports, which constitute about a third of all manufacturing industry exports, rose by 10.7% year on year in January-November. Exports of the vehicle industry, which make up about 30% of all processing industry exports, were up 23.2% in April.

Industrial exports were up by 19.2% year on year in April (as compared with3.4% in March) and 12% in Jan-Apr.

Domestic sales were up by 8.2% year on year in April, against the tiny 0.5% rise in March. The Jan-Apr growth rate was 3.4%. Really it is well worth taking March and April together in all this data.