By Mary Carroll, Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Industrial production in Brazil managed three consecutive months of growth, only to be followed by one percent fall in September, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) survey. A notable contrast with August, when there was an increase of 1.7 percent from July.
The decrease was twice the amount anticipated by financial market analysts. Manager of the IBGE survey, André Macedo, believes it is important “to take into account the seasonal adjustments.”
Macedo explained that the drop may have, in part, been caused by the ‘calender effect’: September had only nineteen working days, where as August had twenty-three working days.
While Eduardo Velho, an economist at Planner Brokerage, factored in the worsening global economic crisis as one of the elements that may have influenced the statistics.
The survey revealed that, in September, the industry experienced its biggest decline since January when it shrank by 1.8 percent.
Among the prominent falls were the machinery and equipment sectors (-4.8 percent), chemical products (-3.2 percent) and food (-1.9 percent). Even the automobile sector, which was mainly responsible for the revival of the industry from June to August, fell 0.7 percent from August to September.
The most significant of the increases recorded were in the pharmaceutical industry (six percent) and other transport equipment (4.4 percent), which softened the blow and help to prevent a further fall in figures for the industry.
Itaú predicts that GDP growth in the last four months of the year may be below its current projection of 1.3 percent, as a result.
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