Factory production grew by nearly a quarter in February from a year ago, on higher output of food, electrical machinery, beverage and petroleum products, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority show.
Results of the Monthly Integrated Survey of Selected Industries showed that the growth in the volume of production index picked up from 21.9 percent in January and 9.8 percent a year ago.
The value of production index also increased 23.6 percent.
“This signals a continued improvement from its slowdown since the second quarter of 2017,” Neda officer-in-charge and Undersecretary for policy and planning Rosemarie Edillon said in a statement.
“The increasing working-age population, rising productivity, improvement in business environment, and aggressive infrastructure development will also help spur growth in the sector,” she said.
She said the industries’ outlook for both the current and succeeding quarters remained bullish with the expectation of sustained robust demand, improvement in production capacity, new product lines and enhanced marketing strategies.
The positive business sentiment of Philippine industries mirrored the high business confidence among Asian companies in the first quarter of 2018.
Edillon said said risks to growth remained and the government should be cautious about the rising inflation rate which might lead to higher cost of production for manufacturing firms.
“Strategies are needed to be pursued to sustain the upward growth trajectory of the manufacturing sector,” Edillon said.
The 24.8-percent growth in volume of production index in February was driven mainly by the increments in 16 major sectors, 11 of them registering two-digit increases: printing, 108 percent; food manufacturing, 32.6 percent; electrical machinery, 30.3 percent; beverages, 24.1 percent; petroleum products, 23.4 percent; miscellaneous manufactures, 20.5 percent; leather products, 14.4 percent; fabricated metal products, 12.6 percent; chemical products, 11.1 percent; basic metals, 10.7 percent; and machinery except electrical, 10.4 percent.
Average capacity utilization rate in February was recorded at 84.2 percent.