Planning and Statistics Authority has issued a press release for April 2020 of industrial production index to study and analyze the economic level of the state. This index details the growth of various industrial sectors in economy such as “Mining”, “Manufacturing”, “Electricity production”, and “Water production and desalination”. It is a short-term quantitative index that measures the changes in the volume of productions of a selected basket of industrial products over a given period with respect to that in a chosen period called the base period.

 

The Industrial Production Index consists of three main components: "Mining" with a relative importance of 83.6%, "Manufacturing" with a relative importance of 15.2%, "Electricity" with a relative importance of 0.7%, and finally "Water" with a relative importance of 0.5%.

 

The Industrial Production index (IPI), April 2020 amounted to 98.3 points, decreased by 2.5% compared to the previous month (April 2020), and decreased by 3.2%, when compared to the corresponding month of 2019. 

 

 

The analysis of the monthly IPI of the above activities as follows:

 1.“Mining”: The index of this sector showed a decrease by 2.6% compared to the previous month (March 2020), as a result of the decrease in the quantities of "crude oil and natural gas" by 2.6%, while "Other mining and quarrying" showed a decrease by 13.2%. When compared to the corresponding month of the previous year (April 2019), the IPI of Mining decreased by 3.3%. 
 

2.“Manufacturing”: The index of this sector showed a decrease by 2.0% compared to the previous month (March 2020), The groups showed a decreases include: “Manufacture of refined petroleum products”, and “Manufacture of Cement and other non-metallic mineral products” by 19.0% each, followed by "Manufacture of beverages" by 4.5%, “Manufacture of rubber and plastics products” by 2.3%, "Manufacture of basic metals” by 2.0%, and “Manufacture of food products” by 1.3%.  However, an increase was recorded in one group: "Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products" by 2.5%.

 

As  for “Printing and reproduction of recorded media”,  the Production was  stopped during the month of April 2020, due to the Corona pandemic. The relative weight of this group was distributed to the rest of the sub-groups of the manufacturing sector, and then the index for industrial production was calculated. 
 

On the other hand, in terms of annual change, comparing to April 2019,  a decrease of 3.7% was recorded, affected by the following groups: “Manufacture of Cement & other non-metallic mineral products" by 22.5%, followed by “Manufacture of basic metals” by 17.1,  “Manufacture of refined petroleum products” by 15.2%, "Manufacture of beverages" by 9.7%, and “Manufacture of rubber and plastics products” by 4.1%.  However, an increase recorded in,  “Manufacture of food products” by 9.0%,  and “Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products” by 2.2%.

3.“Electricity”: An increase of 14.4% was noticed in the production of “Electricity” between April 2020 and the previous month (March2020), while the annual increase when comparing with April 2019, was 10.4%.

 

4. “Water”: An increase of 6.6% was noticed in the production of ‘'Water'' between April 2020 and the previous month (March 2020). Comparing with corresponding month (April 2019), an increase of 19.9% was recorded.