Serbian industry declines

In March this year, industrial production in Serbia recorded a YOY drop by 2.8 percent, and the main reason was a drop in manufacturing production by 5.8 percent, according to the authors of the economic newsletter Macroeconomic Analyses and Trends (Makroekonomske analize i trendovi – MAT).
„The decline in manufacturing production is mainly the result of the halted production in the oil industry, which occurs about once in two years, due to the overhauls of the plants,“ MAT’s editor Ivan Nikolic said at the promotion of the latest issue of this newsletter of the Economic Institute and the Serbian Chamber of Commerce.
He said that if the oil industry had achieved the same production in March this year as it did in the same month last year, manufacturing production would have recorded a growth of about 1.6 percent.
According to the estimates of MAT’s associates, in the upcoming months, manufacturing production will achieve growth that will likely exceed two percent in 2019, which was last year’s growth, but it will be lower than six percent, which was the growth recorded in three consecutive years, from 2015 until 2017.
As it is pointed out, production achieved by the electric power industry increased by 7.3 percent in March and mining production rose by 3.2 percent, while the chemical industry dropped by 14.3 percent YOY.
The production of motor vehicles was halved in the first quarter, i.e. YOY decline was 52%, which was mainly the result of lower production in Fiat’s factory in Kragujevac.

Izvor: Beta

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