The Physical Volume Index of the Manufacturing Industry was also affected by a December with two fewer business days than the same month in 2022.
The Industrial production fell 7.8% year-on-year in December, with a strong impact coming from the closure for maintenance of the La Teja refinery in Ancap, that prevented it from having the refining service Petroleum.
This is how it arises from the last Manufacturing Industry Physical Volume Index (Ivfim), published today by the INE, which compared the data for December 2023 with the same month of 2022. In addition to the La Teja stoppage, which had two more business days, which also influenced the drop.
In this way, the index was 107.4, below the 113.5 in November. With these figures, activity in the sector had a positive variation of 0.6% in the last two months, ratifying a slight increase for 2023.
In turn, the Index of Hours Worked by workers (IHT) showed a fall of 0.9% in December, which will contract to 0.2% during 2023. Meanwhile, the Employed Personnel Index (IPO) showed a decrease of 0.8%, which falls to 0.6% if the last 12 months are compared.
The incidence of the La Teja stop and food
The lack of service in The Tile produced a decrease of 98.8% in the refinery branch of Petroleum, whose incidence was 6.4% in the total. This effect will be felt again in the coming months, because there are almost two months left for it to fully operate again.
At the same time, the effect of the development of food products, with a decline of 8.7% and incidence of 3.6%, while the preparation of drinks fell 10.4%, with a minor impact of 0.8%.
UPM Pulp
Photo: UPM
Pulp and cars pushed up
Beyond the overall decline, there were two splits that pushed the index higher. One of them was the manufacture of paper and paper products, linked to the activity in UPM 2, which grew by 32.5%.
At the same time, the manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers showed a positive variation of 43%, at a time when vehicle sales in the country are also growing.
Source: Ambito
