Industrial activity rises to the highest in over 4 years – E24

The Purchasing Managers’ Index for Norwegian industry (PMI) shows an increase of 4.9 points to 63.7 points seasonally adjusted in November, according to DNB and the Norwegian Confederation of Purchasing and Logistics (NIMA), which is responsible for the survey.

The rise follows three consecutive months of declines, and is the strongest level since July 2017. In advance, economists expected a marginal decline to 58.0 points, according to Bloomberg.

Senior economist Kyrre Aamdal in DNB Markets emphasizes that the result must be interpreted with caution, as only 43 companies responded to the survey. That is just under half of normal participation.

– When the response rate is halved, it can turn out both ways. The uncertainty increases so much that it is difficult to interpret the changes in the index. This indicates that little emphasis is placed on the result this time, he says to E24.

Record high delivery times

In November, there is an increase in all sub-categories of the index, with a particularly large increase in production and employment.

Both the production and employment indices rise by almost ten points to 65.5 and 62.7 points, respectively.

The index for new orders increased by 1.3 points to 57.8 points in November, and is thus back at the same level as in August. Where orders were divided by domestic market and exports, the former rose by 5.4 points, while there was a fall in exports of 0.3 points.

There are still high levels of delivery time and prices of intermediate goods, although the latter decreased in November.

The index for suppliers’ delivery time rose by 3.0 points in November to a new peak of 86.4.

A high index means long delivery time, which normally means high demand, but is now probably more a sign of delivery problems related to the global bottlenecks, Aamdal explains.

Inventories of purchased goods rose by 3.3 points to 55.4 in November. It is normally assumed that higher inventories reflect lower demand, and an increase in inventories thus contributes to a somewhat lower total index in November.

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