MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mild recovery of Argentine industrial activity during January

In January 2020, auto production jumped 39.2%; chemical and plastic, 14.6%; metal mechanics, 5.6%; paper and cellulose, 2.5%; textiles, 2%

The argentine industrial activity stopped sliding last January after two full years of contraction and managed a 4.8% growth over a year ago, according to the latest review of the industry by the Foundation of Latin American economic research, FIEL. However, the overall Industrial Production Index ended the twelve months of 2019 with a 4.6% fall compared to 2018.

But this did not prevent some sectors of the Argentine economy to show tepid signs of recovery such as Food and Beverage and petroleum refining, which helped December advance 3.4%. This represented a 0.4% increase over November with an annual drop of 0.2% in the fourth quarter.

In January 2020, auto production jumped 39.2%; chemical and plastic, 14.6%; metal mechanics, 5.6%; paper and cellulose, 2.5%; textiles, 2%; oil processing, 0.9% and food and beverage, 0.5%, compared to January 2019.

However some sectors continued to slip Jan-Jan including cigarettes, 5.4%; non mineral metals 5.8%, steel 11.1%.

FIEL anyhow reports that in the short term the sustainability of the December January results remain fragile, and it is still premature to establish the net impact on the industrial activity of the current government policies to promote consumption and redistribution policies.