THE Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa) has described the year-on-year improvement in manufacturing production in March as encouraging, despite coming off a low base, with March 2020’s output having been negatively impacted on by lockdown restrictions.
According to manufacturing data released by Statistics South Africa on May 11, manufacturing production increased by 4.6% year-on-year and by 3.4% month-on-month, in March.
Manufacturing sales increased by 17.8% year-on-year and by 5.9% month-on-month.
For the year to date, production declined by 0.5% year-on-year, while sales increased by 7.4%.
Within the Metals and Engineering (M&E) subsector of the manufacturing sector, which accounts for 29% of total manufacturing production, the 13 subcategories saw a production increase of an average of 5.5% year-on-year in March.
Total sales increased by 18.8% to reach R87.8-billion in March, with the largest sales value being in nonferrous metal products at R23.7-billion.
Seifsa chief economist Chifipa Mhango says the
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