In May, industry remained in negative numbers, the manufacture of transport equipment could not compensate for the decline in other sectors

In the fifth month, the majority of sectors of industrial production continued to decrease year-on-year. This year's second-highest growth in the key manufacture of transport equipment was not able to compensate for the declines in other sectors, but it significantly contributed to slowing down the pace of decline. Thus the Slovak industry´s lagging behind was the slowest in the last eight months.

Industrial production¹⁾ of the SR decreased by 1.4% year-on-year in May 2023. The stagnation of industry continued, but the rate of decline was the slowest since October 2022. Despite the decline, the key sector of the Slovak economy increased in May 2023 that was almost 14% above the average performance in 2015. In a long-term comparison, it was one of the best May performances since 2016, with the exception of the production drop in the pandemic year 2020. Comparison with the average of 2015 (the so-called base index) enables an objective assessment of the industry´s performance over a longer period of time.

A significant decrease continued in manufacture of rubber and plastic products, in May at an even more dynamic pace of 16.2%. The influence of sectors is expressed through the so-called contributions³⁾, which take into account the rate of an increase/decrease combined with the weight of the sector in industrial structure and enable the hierarchization of the effects of individual sectors, this was an impact of minus 1.84 percentage points (p.p.) on the result of the sector.

The second most significant impact on the overall result was a decrease by almost 19% in manufacture of wood and paper products with a contribution of -0.64 p.p., manufacture of computer, electronic and optical products also continued to decrease, up to 26.7% in May, which represented a contribution of -0.54 p.p. After three months of growth, manufacture of basic metals and fabricated metal structures recorded a decrease by 3.1% (contribution -0.38 p.p.).

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In general, decreases in performance in 9 out of 13 monitored groupings of industrial production sectors (special groupings)²⁾ of industry were not affected even by an increase in the most important sector, in manufacture of transport equipment, by 8.1% with a contribution of +2.11 p. p.. Increases were also recorded in three less significant sectors. Manufacture of electrical equipment reached slightly positive numbers of 3.9% (contribution +0.31 p.p.), manufacture of basic pharmaceutical products and preparations (contribution +0.11 p.p.) recorded year-on-year a decrease in performance by 11.4% and for the first time this year manufacture of chemicals and chemical products also recorded a rise of 2.5% (contribution +0.05 p.p.).

On a month-on-month basis (compared to April 2023), after taking seasonal effects into account, industrial production increased by 2.5%.

In terms of breakdown according to the main industrial groupings, production related to energy increased by 8.3% and production of capital goods by 2.7% year-on-year. The other components recorded a year-on-year decline, i.e. production of durable goods by 12.8%, production of intermediate consumption by 8.4% and production of non-durable consumer goods by 0.5%.

In total, for the five months of 2023, industrial production decreased year-on-year by 2.8%. The most significant impact was an increase in manufacture of transport equipment by 7.5% (contribution +1.89 p.p.), which was supported by more moderate increases in the other four sectors²⁾ of industrial production and this increase partly compensated for declines in most sectors of industry recording the most influential decrease in manufacture of rubber and plastic products by 10.6% (contribution -1.12 p.p.) and in manufacture of computer, electronic and optical products by 28.4% (contribution -0.69 p.p.).