French manufacturing sector growth stabilises in April
Staff Writer |
Having softened substantially in recent months, April saw a stabilisation in the rate expansion in the French manufacturing sector, with the headline PMI number broadly unchanged from March.
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Rates of output and employment growth quickened slightly from the prior month, while new orders rose to a slightly weaker extent than in March.
Business confidence dipped to a seven-month low, but remained firmly above the series average.
On the price front, input price inflation remained elevated, and contributed to another sharp rise in average selling prices.
The IHS Markit France Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) posted 53.8 in April to signal a nineteenth consecutive improvement in the overall health of the French manufacturing sector.
The index reading was only fractionally higher than March’s 12-month low of 53.7, but ended a three-month sequence of slower growth.
The improvement in business conditions remained broad-based across each of the three sub-sectors, spearheaded by investment goods.
Overall growth was supported by another rise in new business, albeit the weakest for over a year.
The increase was broad-based across foreign and domestic markets, with new export orders rising for the nineteenth consecutive month.
Buoyed by rising client demand, firms took on additional workers in April, extending the current period of job creation to a year-and-a-half.
Moreover, the rate of increase quickened from March and was marked overall.
In spite of this, the rate of backlog accumulation quickened from March and remained firmly greater than the longrun average.
In line with the trend for employment, output rose at a sharper pace during April, thereby reversing the trend that had been evident in each of the prior three surveys.
Despite this, stocks of finished goods held by French manufacturers fell for the second time in as many months during April.
Meanwhile, data signalled that firms expect further output growth over the coming 12 months.
Input buying rose for the nineteenth time in as many months, albeit to the weakest extent since February 2017.
Meanwhile, pre-production inventories were broadly unchanged from March.
Finally, input cost inflation faced by French manufacturers remained elevated despite easing fractionally from March.
In turn, this encouraged firms to further hike their average selling prices. ■