The industrial trend index is approaching a growth peak

Even if the improvement was not significant, a continuous improvement in the assessment of the industrial company’s business environment has been observed since the beginning of the year.

Production forecasts for the first quarter of the year were very positive, optimism decreased a bit in April, but already forecasts an increase in the number of employees and assesses the demand quite positively.

According to Vidmantas Januleviius, president of LPK, the situation in the industrial sector is stabilizing, but slowly.

A certain improvement in the situation is due to falling energy prices, which has a positive effect on the chemical industry. In addition, the situation in the wood and furniture sectors is improving. Mayan reserves in the euro zone encourage manufacturers to increase final output, which generates more orders for Lithuanian manufacturers and improves export prospects, noted the LPK president.

So far, the number of orders we have is not growing significantly, but neither is it decreasing. But we are starting to worry about the lack of workers.

There is high confidence that exports will grow in the next three months, even if at the moment the export demand is not satisfied by about four out of ten industrial companies.

Production capacity utilization increased by 70.2% in April. It was the third year since 2023. at the beginning, when capacity utilization reached 70%.

Lower than average industrial capacity utilization in April was recorded in other non-metallic mineral products production (42.1%), furniture production (59.4%), computers, electronic and optical products production (60%), chemical and chemical products production (63 .3%) and rubber and plastic products in the manufacturing (67.1%) sectors.

Better-than-average industry-wide expectations for the month of April were recorded in the computer, electronic and optical products manufacturing, metal products, rubber and plastic products manufacturing, other non-metallic mineral products manufacturing, food products and textile manufacturing sectors.

The Lithuanian industry trend index has been compiled since 2015.

The maximum recorded industrial trend index value was 54.5 (May 2021), and the lowest ever recorded was 38.9 (April 2020).

The industrial trend index is compiled using the monthly data of the survey of industry (manufacturing production) business trends provided by the State Data Agency. The industrial trend index is a weighted average of four indicators: production forecasts (35%), industrial demand estimates (30%), inventory estimates (with available index; 20%) and employee forecasts (15%).

The value of the industry trend index ranges from 0 to 100, where 50 indicates a neutral, without clear direction opinion of company managers regarding future business trends, more than 50 indicates growth trends in the industry, less than 50 indicates a decline in the company’s activity.