The economic activities in Qatar’s industrial and manufacturing sector witnessed a moderately positive growth in July as COVID-19 related restrictions and lockdown have started easing out in a phased manner.
The monthly Industrial Production Index (IPI) for July 2020 stood at 107.3 points, showing a month-on-month increase of 2.3 percent compared to the previous month (June 2020), official data show.
However, when compared on annual basis, the index has decreased by 1.6 percent, against the IPI of the corresponding month last year (July 2019), data released yesterday by the Planning and Statistics Authority revealed. The index (IPI) details the growth of various industrial sectors in economy such as “Mining”, “Manufacturing”, “Electricity production”, and “Water production and desalination”.
It is a short-term quantitative index that measures the changes in the volume of productions 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 percent, “Manufacturing” with a relative importance of 15.2 percent, “Electricity” with a relative importance of 0.7 percent, and finally “Water” with a relative importance of 0.5 percent.
The analysis of the monthly IPI of “Mining” sector showed an increase by 2.7 percent compared to the previous month (June 2020), as a result of the increase in the quantities of “crude oil petroleum and natural gas” by 2.7 percent, while “Other mining and quarrying” showed an increase by 1.5 percent.
When compared to the corresponding month of the previous year (July 2019), the IPI of Mining decreased by 1.9 percentThe index for the “Manufacturing” sector showed an increase of 0.1 percent compared to the previous month (June 2020).
The groups showed increases in varying degrees including: “Manufacture of basic metals” by 13.0 percent, followed by “Manufacture of refined petroleum products” by 10.5 percent, “Manufacture of beverages” by 8.5 percent, and “Manufacture of Cement and other non-metallic mineral products” by 0.7 percent. However a decrease recorded in “Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products” by 4.0 percent, “Manufacture of food products” by 1.6 percent, and “Manufacture of rubber and plastics products” by 0.7 percent.
As for “Printing and reproduction of recorded media”, the Production was stopped during the month of July 2020, due to the Corona pandemic. The relative weight of this group was distributed to the rest of the sub-groups of the manufacturing sector, and then the index for industrial production was calculated. On the other hand, in terms of annual change, comparing to July 2019, a decrease of 0.7 percent was recorded, affected by the following groups: “Manufacture of Cement & other non-metallic mineral products” by 11.0 percent, followed by “Manufacture of refined petroleum products” by 9.2 percent, “Manufacture of basic metals” by 4.9 percent, and “Manufacture of rubber and plastics products” by 2.7 percent. In the “Electricity” sector, an increase of 15.3 percent was noticed in the production of power between July 2020 and June 2020), while the annual increase when comparing with July 2019, was 4.1 percent.
In the “Water” sector, an increase of 3.3 percent was noticed in the production of ‘‘Water’’ between July 2020 and the previous month (June 2020). Comparing with corresponding month (July 2019), an increase of 6.4 percent was recorded.
