The industrial production numbers that came out today weren’t much more encouraging than yesterday’s trade numbers. But what they say about 1Q2012 GDP is a bit startling.
Before getting into that, the IPI, like exports, showed a bit of a setback (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted; 2000=100):
I’m more inclined to think of this as a carry over from CNY, and hopefully not a harbinger of things to come. Nevertheless, it’s not a terribly good performance for the month. To be fair though, the unadjusted series are all looking up (index numbers; 2000=100):
The growth numbers don’t amount to much, but there does appear to be some momentum going forward.
More to the point, the IPI based forecast for 1Q GDP looks astonishingly good:
The point forecast is at RM148.3 billion, which gives a y-o-y increase of 5.2% (7.8% q-o-q SAAR), which is a big jump from last month’s preliminary reading of just 4.3%. The annual increase is just a tad below 4Q2011’s 5.4%, but the quarterly increase would be the fastest since 1Q2011’s 8.4%.
That’s more than decent, and probably means that everybody (me included) needs to upgrade their growth forecast for the whole year.
Technical Notes
March 2012 Industrial Production report from the Department of Statistics
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I was hoping for at least 6.0% increase y-o-y for Q1 gdp growth. Sigh..
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