Industrial output rise still expected

AN increase of between 3% and 5% in industrial production is still expected for this year, despite provisional figures for May showing a marginal month-by-month decline.

Latest data, issued yesterday by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), forecast that production volumes within Ireland’s manufacturing industries fell in May by 0.1% on April levels, but grew by 0.3% on a year-on-year basis.

The figures also showed there was a large difference between performance in the ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ sectors — the latter showing annualised growth of 4.4% in production, but the former (which comprises a number of high-tech and chemical sub-sectors) dipping by 1.5%, year-on-year.