Industrial production grows 0.3% in May

Compared to May 2022, the sector increased by 1.9%. In the quarterly moving average, the advance is 0.3%. Despite this, the indicator accumulates a drop of 0.4% in the year and stability in the accumulated 12 months.

“The industrial sector is 1.5% below the pre-pandemic level, that is, February 2020, and 18.1% below the record level, reached in May 2011”, says the survey manager, André Macedo. “Industrial production, which advanced 1.5% in the last three months of 2022 and continues with a positive balance of 0.4% at the beginning of 2023 compared to the level that had ended last year, still remains far from recovering the losses of the recent past”.

Nineteen of the 25 industrial sectors analyzed in the survey increased in relation to April, with highlights for coke, petroleum products and biofuels (7.7%), motor vehicles, trailers and bodies (7.4%) and machines and equipment ( 12.3%).

On the other hand, among the six activities in decline, the main impacts came from food products (-2.6%) and pharmochemical and pharmaceutical products (-9.7%).

Of the four major economic categories of industry, three increased from April to May: durable consumer goods (9.8%), capital goods, that is, machines and equipment used in the productive sector (4.2%) and goods intermediaries, that is, industrialized inputs used in the productive sector (0.1%).

Semi-durable and non-durable consumer goods fell in the period: -1.1%.