European Industrial Production, September 2023:  Following the UK manufacturing output data which we reported last week, Eurostat has published the European figures, although they use industrial production as the headline series and don’t provide directly comparable data for the manufacturing sector in their news release.  Another complication is that their data is monthly with no easy way of determining the quarterly figures from the press release;  it is all seasonally adjusted.

Total industrial production (IP) in the EU September fell by -0.9% compared to August, with the Euro-zone seeing a reduction of -1.1%;  as a result, total IP is -6.1% lower than in September 2022 for the EU, with a fall of -6.9% in the Euro-zone.

There is a small glimmer of good news in that on the month-by-month comparison, output of the capital goods industries increased by +0.4% in the EU and by +0.3% in the Euro-zone (it was the only sub-sector to see an increase in output), with durable consumer goods the weakest group in both areas.  However, this is where the good news ends as looking back 12 months to September 2022 shows that capital goods output in the EU fell by -8.1%, with a decline of -9.5% in the Euro-zone.

Staying with the 12-month comparison, among the 26 Member States who have published the data (Cyprus is always a month behind), total industrial production increased in only 4, was unchanged in 1 (France) and fell in the other 21.  The increases in total IP were in Denmark (+2.8%), Greece (+2.1%), Croatia (+1.6%) and Malta (+0.4%).

The largest reductions were recorded in Ireland (-27.2%, but this is often very volatile due to the presence of multi-national headquarters operations and a large pharmaceutical sector), Belgium (-14.0%), Estonia (-12.5%) and Bulgaria (-11.5%).

You can get the full details from the Eurostat News Release which can be downloaded from their website at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/news/euro-indicators (15 November) or requested from MTA.

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European GDP, 3rd Quarter 2023:  Eurostat has also released an update to the GDP figures it first reported a couple of weeks ago;  it has confirmed its original estimate that GDP in the Euro-zone fell by -0.1% compared to the previous quarter but has downgraded the estimate for the EU to stable from +0.1%.  Compared to the 3rd quarter of 2022, GDP grew by +0.1% in both the EU and the Euro-zone (both unchanged from the first data release).

Eurostat gives a comparison with the USA where it reports GDP grew by +1.2% quarter-on-quarter for an annualized rate of +2.9%.

Within Europe, we now have data for 23 of the 27 EU Member States (Croatia, Greece, Luxembourg and Malta are missing);  of these, 10 countries saw a quarter-on-quarter increase in GDP, two (Italy and Sweden) were unchanged and the other 11 had a contraction in their economy.  Four of the countries in the latter category also saw their economy contract in the 2nd quarter and are, therefore, defined as being in a recession (defined as 2 consecutive quarters of non-positive growth) – these were Austria, Denmark, Estonia (where the run now extends to 7 quarters) and Netherlands (now 3 quarters).

You can get the full details from the Eurostat News Release which can be downloaded from their website at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/news/euro-indicators (14 November) or requested from MTA.

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