Industrial turnover slows again in September, to 2.1% – INE
Portugal's industrial turnover index posted year-on-year nominal growth of 2.1% in September, 0.8 percentage points lower than in August reflecting a downturn in the domestic market.
The National Statistics Institute (INE) said on Friday that the “sales indices for domestic and foreign markets grew by 2.7% and 1.1% respectively (variations of 4.2% and 0.7% month-on-month),” and September’s result was also influenced by the fact that September 2018 had one less working day than in 2017 and two days fewer than the previous month.
The groupings of ‘capital goods’ and ‘energy’ increased by 10.1% and 5.3%, respectively (changes of -10.2% and 11.7%) and together contributed 2.8 percentage points to the year-on-year change in the aggregate index.
Meanwhile, the “intermediate goods” and “consumer goods” indices fell by 1.0% and 1.5%, respectively (increases of 2.2% and 1.3% in the previous month), together contributing -0.7 percentage points to the total change.
The employment index maintained an increase of 2.2% in September, while wages increased by 3.4% (5.1% in August) and the number of hours worked had a year-on-year change of -1.8% (0.4% in the previous month).
Considering the third quarter of 2018, industrial sales increased by 5.1% year-on-year (7.7% in the second quarter).
In terms of the monthly variation, the industrial turnover index in September recorded a change of 13.8% (14.7% in September 2017).
The monthly variations in employment and hours worked stood at 0.2% and 32.2% (0.3% and 35.3% in September 2017), respectively, and the remuneration index decreased by 13.5% in September (variation of -12.1% in the same period of the previous year).
LUSA