MANUFACTURING: SLOW GROWTH IN MARCH

During March 2016, the manufacturing sector in Nigeria recorded a very slow growth, according to Central Bank of Nigeria Purchasing Managers Index for the month released recently.
The composite PMI increased very marginally from 45.5 in February 2016 to 45.9.
In the composite basket were 12 indices for different activities crucial to manufacturing. These are production level, new orders, supply delivery time, employment level, raw materials and work in progress inventories and new export orders.
Other indices in the composite basket were output prices, input prices, quantity of purchase, business outstanding and finished goods.
The survey usually conducted by the Survey management division of the CBN statistics department involved administration and retrieval of 1564 out of 1850 questionnaires on purchasing executives across 13 locations in two States per each geopolitical zone of the country including Abuja.
The main good news in the March survey report that pushed up the composite index was the increases in production index from 45.0 in February to 46.6 by March.; employment level index to 45.5 from 45.0 by February and Business outstanding index from 38.5 in February to 41.2 by March.
However, input prices index at 60.9 by March from 57.0 in February continued to apply pressure on manufacturing in Nigeria although output prices index at 56.4 from 53.0 helped to transfer some of this to consumers at the market place.
The indices for new orders, and new export orders dropped while that for raw materials/ work in progress inventories increased.
Broken down into sectors the production level index  increase  was led more by improvements in petroleum products, appliances and components, and chemical and pharmaceuticals in that order.
At the same time, significant drops were reported in plastics and rubber products, transport equipment and primary metal, again in stated order.
In terms of new orders reported, leading sectors were petroleum products, appliances and components, paper products and non-metallic products..
Top drags came from transport equipment manufacture, primary metals, plastics and rubber products, printing and related support and cement production.
The states covered in the different zones were Lagos and Ondo for South west, Cross River and Delta for South south, Enugu and IMO for South east, Sokoto and Kano for North west, Bauchi and Adamawa for North east and Niger and Plateau for North central.