Hiring outlook for the manufacturing sector remains subdued: FICCI Manufacturing Survey
New Delhi, 17 July 2017: FICCI’s latest Quarterly Survey on Manufacturing suggests slight improvement in the manufacturing sector outlook in the first quarter (April – June 2017-18) of the fiscal as the percentage of respondents reporting higher production in first quarter have increased vis-à-vis previous quarter. More importantly, FICCI Survey suggests that the percentage of respondents reporting lower production has reduced considerably over the previous quarter thereby indicating a more positive outlook in months to come. The proportion of respondents reporting higher output growth during the April – June 2017-18 quarter has risen slightly from 47% January – March 2016-17 to 49%. Respondents reporting negative growth have come down to 17% in April – June 2017-18 from 27% as reported in the previous quarter, noted FICCI Survey.
FICCI’s latest quarterly survey assessed the expectations of manufacturers for Q-1 (April – June 2017-18) for eleven major sectors namely auto, capital goods, cement and ceramics, chemicals and fertilizers, electronics & electricals, leather and footwear, machine tools, metal and metal products, paper products, textiles and technical textiles, and textiles machinery. Responses have been drawn from over 300 manufacturing units from both large and SME segments with a combined annual turnover of over 3.5 lac crore.
However, the cause for worry was the rising cost of production (for a little over two-thirds of the respondents), the Survey noted. The cost of production as a percentage of sales for product for manufacturers in the survey has risen significantly as 69% respondents in Q-1 2017-18, against 60% respondents reported cost escalation in last quarter. This is primarily due to rise in minimum wages and raw material cost.
