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The production of the SME manufacturing industry grew 4.8% in February compared to the same month last year, while the comparison with January reflected an improvement of 1.2%, reported the Argentine Confederation of Medium Enterprises (CAME).
For his part, the use of installed capacity in industrial SMEs fell slightly, to 71.7%, 0.9 percentage points below Januarya result that was repeated for the second month in which progress in production is combined with less use of facilities, which can be explained by higher levels of investment in different sectors, especially in Food and Beverages.
From CAME they pointed out that “February was very affected by the cost hikes. The delays in the deliveries of inputs by the suppliers and the doubts of some companies when accepting new production orders, for fear of failing to comply with the delivery times, are among the patterns observed”.
“The delays in the deliveries of inputs by suppliers and the doubts of some companies when accepting new production orders, for fear of failing to comply with delivery times, are among the patterns observed”
These results correspond to the SME Industrial Production Index (IPIP) prepared by CAME, based on a sample made up of 372 SME industries from all over the country.
By sectors, the best performance in the annual comparison, in February, was in Woods and Furniture (+9.2%) and the worst corresponded to paper and prints (-7%).
Of the six sectors measured in the production index, 4 ended with growth and 2 with declines.
In Food and drinks production registered an increase of 8.1% year-on-year in February and 2.8% monthly at constant prices.
In this way, it accumulates a development of 6.6% in the first two months of the year, with a use of installed capacity of 73.5% in February.
For its part, in the Clothing and textile category in February, production fell 5.1% year-on-year, with which the accumulated figure for the first two months of 2023 marked a decline of 4.4%.
