Brazil’s Industrial Production Remains Stagnant in October

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – Brazilian industrial production remained stagnant in October in relation to September, when it registered a negative variation of 0.2 percent, according to data from the IBGE (Brazilian Statistical Bureau). The accumulated retraction in the first ten months of 2014 is of 3.0 percent.

“Although there is stability from September to October, there is a clear tendency of decline since two of the four large economic categories and 16 of the 24 industrial activities registered a decline,” said André Luiz Macedo, Industry Coordinator Manager at IBGE.

Among the main economic categories, the production of capital goods and intermediary goods registered a zero percent growth, while production of durable consumption goods fell by 0.8 percent and semi and non-durable consumption goods decreased by 0.6 percent.

According to the IBGE, this is the eighth consecutive month of declines for some activity sectors in the Brazilian economy. The largest negative result came from pharmaceutical and pharma-chemical goods, which declined by 9.7 percent, followed by automotive production which registered a decrease of 2.2 percent. Other important negative contributions included mineral products (-2.1 percent), leather and footwear products (-3.2 percent), tobacco (-6.2 percent) and beverages (1.3 percent).

Among the industries which registered a growth in production were IT equipment and electronic products (4.7 percent) and petroleum, derivatives and biofuels (0.9 percent).

In comparison to October of 2013, the survey shows that the retraction in industry was of 3.6 percent. In the accumulated total of the last twelve months the industry registers a retraction of 2.6 percent, the highest since September of 2012.