The Slovak industry stagnated in February, the decline of most sectors was covered by energy and manufacture of electrical equipment

The key sector of the Slovak economy, industry, developed comparable to last year after half a year of recovery. Up to two-thirds of sectors of industry, including automobile companies, recorded a year-on-year lower performance. Furthermore, a significant drop in mining continued, where production d by more than 41%, mainly due to the closure of mines.

Industrial production¹⁾ of the SR remained at the same level as last year in February 2024. After the recalculation of the long-term time series of data due to the transition to the new base period of 2021, industrial production stagnated year-on-year after six months of continuous growth.

The Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic would like to inform that starting from the data for January 2024, all values of the year-on-year indices of industrial production have been recalculated due to methodological adjustments - the change to a new base period (from 2015 to 2021)²⁾ (PDF - 220 kB).

Download high resolution chart format PDF (70 kB) or PNG (124 kB).

In total, 10 of the 15 monitored sectors (special groupings of sectors)³⁾ recorded a year-on-year lower performance, among them several key sectors of Slovak industry. Nevertheless, the performance of the industry remained at a level comparable to last year. A 23.1% growth in electricity, gas, steam and air-conditioning supply (contribution of +2.15 p.p.) and also an almost 19% increase in manufacture of electrical equipment contributed significantly to this. Manufacture of food also continued to record positive figures for the second month, rising by 7.2% year-on-year in February (contribution +0.35 p.p.).

The contribution⁴⁾ is an indicator that takes into account the rate of growth/decline in combination with the weight of the sector in the structure of the industry and hierarchizes the influences of individual sectors on the entire sector.

Download high resolution chart format PDF (104 kB) or PNG (140 kB).

Among the sectors that hindered the growth of industry by slowing down performance, the most significant impact was a 9.2% decrease in manufacture of machinery and equipment (contribution -0.82 p.p.) and also a drop of over 41% in mining and quarrying (contribution -0.68 p.p.). The double-digit decrease in the year-on-year comparison continued for the second consecutive month also in other manufacture and installation of machines (decrease by 16.3%, contribution -0.65 p.p.) or manufacture of computer products (decrease by 17.6%, contribution -0.58 p.p.).

Lower performance was recorded by the key manufacture of transport equipment for the second time this year, the current decrease was 2.2% (contribution -0.56 p.p.)

On a month-on-month basis (compared to January 2024), after taking seasonal effects into account, industrial production increased by 0.4%.

In total, for the first two months of 2024, industrial production year-on-year increased by 1.7%. 6 out of a total of 15 monitored sectors (special groupings of sectors)³⁾ had a higher performance than in the same period last year. The most significant influence on the result was almost a quarter (24.1%) growth in electricity and gas supply (contribution +2.52 p.p.) and an approximately 7% increase in manufacture of metal (contribution +1.20 p.p.). The industry was hindered mainly by manufacture of transport equipment, which recorded a year-on-year decrease of 4.1% in the first two months of 2024 (contribution -1.01 p.p.).