Factory growth skids to lowest
New Delhi, May 2: India’s manufacturing activity slid in April to its slowest pace of growth for 17 months as a drop in domestic orders and power supply problems affected output, a private business survey showed Thursday.
The purchasing managers’ index ( PMI) from HSBC, which giv-es a snapshot of manufacturing health from output to jobs, slid to 51.0 in April, down fr-om 52.0 in the previous month. A figure of over 50 indicates growth in the sector while below 50 points shows a contraction.
“Manufacturing acti-vity lost momentum again in April, with output growth slowing further on the back of a deceleration in domestic orders and continued power outages,” said HSBC chief economist Leif Eskesen.
The survey’s findings — based on data from more than 500 manufacturers — comes a day before a meet- ing of the RBI, which is widely expected to cut interest rates to try to jumpstart a sharply slowing economy. “Export orders, on the other hand, picked up. Encouragingly, in-put and output price inflation eased. With the growth momentum slowing and inflation receding, the RBI is likely to cut the policy rate this week,” he said. India’s economy is estimated to have grown at a decade-low rate of 5.0 percent in the fiscal year ended March.
Meanwhile, India plans to impose safeguard duties on some iron and steel pipes, tubes and profiles to protect domestic producers from a flood of imports.
The Directorate General of Safeguards has initiated an investigation on impact of large scale import of seamless pipes, tubes and hollow profiles of iron or non-ally steel from countries such as China and Italy. — AFP, Reuters