Monday, September 1, 2014

1/9/2014: Russia Manufacturing PMI: August 2014


Russia's HSBC Manufacturing PMIs for August show that the economy "continued to experience a tentative recovery in business conditions in August. Faster growth of new orders led to a further rise in output, albeit at a weaker rate than in July."

On the negative side, "Growth of new orders and output remained historically weak, however, and new export business continued to decline in the latest period. Input price inflation strengthened for the first time in five months, linked to the weaker ruble and shortages of some inputs. Output prices also
increased at a stronger rate, but overall inflationary pressures remained weak in the context of historic
survey data."

Another negative is that m/m improvements have now fallen to 0.0% which marks the first non-positive month of m/m changes in PMI since March 2014.

Overall, Manufacturing PMI came in at 51.0 which signals the same rate of growth as recorded in July. This marks a second consecutive month of above 50.0 readings for the sector. 3mo average came in at 50.4 compared to 3mo average through May at 48.6 and compared to 50.1 3mo average through August 2013.

The numbers remain weak both in economic terms and statistically, albeit the distribution of PMIs is non-normal. Historical average for the series is only 51.9, with STDEV of 3.44, negative skew of -1.93 and kurtosis of 7.27.

Chart to illustrate:


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