January: Industrial production index increased by 3%

The General Statistics Office has just announced the socio-economic situation in January 2014; accordingly, the industrial production index is estimated to have increased low, at 3% compared to the same period last year.

The representative of the General Statistics Office explained that the reason for the low increase in the industrial production index was due to the sharp decrease in the mining industry by 9.6% (of which, coal mining decreased by 24.7%; crude oil exploitation decreased by 5% and natural gas exploitation decreased by 7.7%) and also due to the impact of some holidays before Tet, while in 2013, the Tet holiday was in February.

It is known that in January, the processing and manufacturing industry still had a fairly good increase of 6.6% compared to the same period in 2013, contributing 4.6 percentage points to the overall increase. The electricity production and distribution industry increased by 4.4%, contributing 0.2 percentage points. The water supply and wastewater and waste treatment industry increased by 9%, contributing 0.1 percentage points. However, the mining industry decreased sharply and accounted for a decrease of 2.1 percentage points in the overall increase.

In addition, some industries had production indexes in the month that increased compared to the same period last year, such as textiles increased by 26.9%, production of prefabricated metal products (except machinery and equipment) increased by 23.8%, and production of electronic, computer and optical products increased by 19.3%.

In addition, some industries with sharp declines were electrical equipment manufacturing down 13.4%, hard coal and lignite mining down sharply 24.7%.

According to the General Statistics Office, the monthly industrial production index of localities fluctuated, Da Nang increased by 9.7%, Binh Duong increased by 9.3%; Hai Phong increased by 7.4%. The two economic locomotives had modest increases: Hanoi increased by 2.4%, Ho Chi Minh City increased by 1.1%.

Notably, some localities in dynamic economic regions are experiencing declines; of which Bac Ninh decreased by 20.5%, Quang Ninh decreased by 18%, and Can Tho decreased by 10%.

The report also showed that the consumption index of the entire processing and manufacturing industry in December 2013 increased by 2.3% compared to the previous month and by 11.2% compared to the same period last year. For the whole year of 2013, the consumption index of the processing and manufacturing industry increased by 10.1% compared to 2012.

Regarding the inventory index, as of January 1, 2014, the inventory index of the entire processing and manufacturing industry increased by 9.7% compared to the same period in 2013; in which the number of industries with inventory index increases much higher than the general increase rate, such as the production of drugs, pharmaceutical chemicals and medicinal materials increased by 117.5%, the production of leather and related products increased by 84%, and the production of metals increased by 82.5%.

Currently, the foreign investment sector is attracting a large number of production workers. Specifically, the labor utilization index in industrial enterprises as of January 1, 2014 increased by 4.3% compared to the same period last year; of which the State enterprise sector decreased by 1%, the non-State enterprise sector increased by 3.6% and the foreign direct investment enterprise sector increased by 6.8%./.

According to baocongthuong