Qatar March IPI Decreases Marginally

Qatar’s monthly industrial production index for March 2018 stood at 103.4 points, showing a marginal decrease of 0.5% compared to the previous month. When compared on year-on-year basis, the IPI index has decreased by 4.4% compared to the corresponding month of 2017, official data show.
The industrial production index, issued by the ministry of development planning and statistics, study and analyze the economic activities in various sectors of the state, which include the growth of various industrial sectors of the local economy, including mining, quarrying, water and electricity production and manufacturing sector, Arabian Business reported.
It is a short-term quantitative index that measures the changes in the volume of production of a selected basket of industrial products over a given period with respect to that in a chosen period called the base period.
The IPI consists of three main components: mining with a relative importance of 83.6%, manufacturing with a relative importance of 15.2%, electricity with a relative importance of 0.7%, and finally water with a relative importance of 0.5%.
Qatar’s mining sector’s index showed a decrease by 1% compared to the previous month, as a result of the decrease in the quantities of crude oil and natural gas produced by 1%, and increase in other mining and quarrying by 2.8%. When compared to the corresponding month of the previous year, the IPI of mining sector decreased by 4.9%.
With regard to the manufacturing sector index, an increase of 1.4% was recorded in March 2018 compared to the previous month, due to the increase in production of seven groups: manufacture of basic metals by 10.9%, rubber and plastics products by 7.3%, cement & other non-metallic mineral products by 6%, beverages by 5.9%, food products by 5.4%, printing and reproduction of recorded media by 1.2%, manufacture of chemicals and chemical products by 0.6%. However a decrease was recorded in manufacture of refined petroleum products by 2.7%.   
On the other hand, in terms of annual change, comparing to March 2017, a decrease of 1.4% was recorded, affected manufacture of refined petroleum products by 7.4%, and chemicals and chemical products by 1.9%.
However, a rise was recorded in manufacture of beverages by 26.5%, food products by 24%, rubber and plastics products by 13.5%, cement & other non-metallic mineral products by 9.4%, basic metals by 2.8%, printing and reproduction of recorded media by 2.6%.