The monthly Industrial Production index (IPI) of Qatar for April 2019 amounted to 101.6 points, showing an increase of 1 percent compared to the previous month (March-2019), and decreased by 1.6 percent, when compared to the corresponding month last year, data released by the Planning and Statistics Authority show.
The IPI index details the growth of various industrial sectors in economy such as “Mining”, “Manufacturing”, “Electricity production”, and “Water production and desalination”. It is a short-term quantitative index that measures the changes in the volume of productions of a selected basket of industrial products over a given period with respect to that in a chosen period called the base period.
The index consists of three main components: “Mining” with a relative importance of 83.6 percent, “Manufacturing” with a relative importance of 15.2 percent, “Electricity” with a relative importance of 0.7 percent, and finally “Water” with a relative importance of 0.5 percent.
The “Mining” sector index for April showed an increase of 1 percent compared to the previous month (March of 2019), as a result of the increase in the quantities of “crude oil and natural gas” by 1 percent, while “Other mining and quarrying” showed an increase by 1.6 percent. When compared to the corresponding month of the previous year (April 2018), the IPI of Mining decreased by 2.1 percent.
The “Manufacturing” sector showed stability compared to the previous month (March -2019), the net effect of rises in some groups and falls in others. The groups showing increases include: “Manufacture of beverages” by 6.5 percent, “Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products” by 2.1 percent, “Manufacture of basic metals” by 2.0 percent, “Manufacture of rubber and plastics products” by 1.5 percent.
However a decrease was recorded in three groups: “Manufacture of refined petroleum products” by 8.2 percent, “Manufacture of Cement & other non-metallic mineral products” by 4.8 percent, “Manufacture of food products” by 0.9 percent. No change noticed in “Printing and reproduction of recorded media”.
On the other hand, in terms of annual change, comparing to April 2018, an increase of 1.1 percent was recorded, supported by the following groups: “Manufacture of basic metals” by 25.3 percent, “Manufacture of beverages” by 8.1 percent, “Manufacture of food products” by 3.2 percent, “Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products” by 2.2 percent.
The “Electricity” sector witnessed an increase of 22.9 percent in the production of “Electricity” group between April 2019 and the previous month (March -2019), while the annual decrease ( comparing with April 2018), was 5.6 percent.
While, in the “Water” sector index, when compared April 2019 with the previous month, an increase of 6 percent was noticed. Comparing with corresponding month (April 2018), a decrease of 10.3 percent was recorded.
