South Africa: Manufacturing rebounds in December

In December, manufacturing production rose 1.1% over the same month of the previous year, which contrasted the 1.9% decrease observed in the previous month. December’s increase was driven by expanding output in most of the sub-indices, where food and beverages, textiles as well as metal products and machinery posted the biggest increases compared to the previous month.

On a monthly basis, manufacturing output rose 2.3% in seasonally-adjusted terms, which contrasted the 2.7% fall tallied in the previous month and marked a three-month high. However, annual average growth in industrial production inched down from 0.2% in November to 0.1% in December.

FocusEconomics Consensus Forecasts panelists expect manufacturing to contract 0.4% in 2015, which is up 0.4 percentage points from last month’s estimate. For 2016, the panel expects manufacturing to expand 2.9%.