"According to this Indicator, we observe that our country takes up the trend of improvement in Spanish industry," said the Secretary General of Industry and SMEs, Raül Blanco; "and that we must strengthen the instruments to maintain the competitiveness of a key sector for the Spanish economy. For example, the status of the electro-intensive consumer, which is in its final phase of processing, is a good instrument to support our industry."
In inter-monthly terms, the advance of 1.9 points in the ICI is mainly motivated by the decrease (improvement) in 2.7 points in the level of stocks, to which the improvement of 2.1 points in the order book is joined and 1.0 point in production expectations.
With respect to February 2019, the gain was 1.3 points, mainly due to the increase of 8.0 points in production expectations.
The ICI improves in two sectors in the last month: 4.6 points for intermediate goods and 0.9 points for capital goods.
In interannual terms, the ICI has improved by 3.0 points in the intermediate goods sector and 2.7 points in capital goods.
Opinion of the companies
The opinions of the industrial companies included in the Survey of Industrial Situation (ECI) indicate, in the month of February 2020, employment expectations for the next three months that recover slightly from the negative values reached during the last quarter of 2019 .
In this way, the three-month employment outlook indicator improves by two tenths compared to the last month, reaching a neutral value of 0.0 points.
The Industrial Situation Survey is a summary of the perception of businessmen in the industrial sector regarding the current situation of their activity and their prospects for future evolution. It is framed in the Common Harmonized Survey Program of the European Union. For this reason, the ICI of Spain is homogeneous in magnitude and directly comparable to that calculated by the European Commission for the EU as a whole. The ICI has a proven predictive capacity on the evolution of production, employment and industrial prices.
