Industrial production in the A. C. of the Basque Country fell by 3.8% in September 2008 compared to the same month of 2007 in homogenous terms of the working calendar, according to EUSTAT data.

Compared to the previous month, August 2008, industrial production in the A.C. of the Basque Country fell by 2.2%, once seasonal effects had been corrected.

The first nine months of 2008 ended with an accumulated fall in the Industrial Production Index of 0.3% with respect to the nine months of the previous year.

Graph 1: Year-on-year quarterly growth of the corrected Industrial Production Index of the A.C. of the Basque Country

Source: EUSTAT

Sector evolution

By sector, and following the classification of the major industrial sectors, the evolution of the index for September 2008 with regard to September 2007 only showed growth for Energy (9.5%). Intermediate Goods were down by 4.0%, Capital Goods fell by 4.5% and Consumer Goods decreased by 10.1%, due to the fall in the prices of Durable Consumer Goods (-19.6%) and Non-Durable Consumer Goods (-5.7% ).

The month-on-month fluctuations in September 2008, with respect to August 2008, were: Capital goods fell be 6.2%, Intermediary Goods by 1.5% and Consumer Goods were down by 2.2%, as the result of the drop recorded by Durable Consumer Goods (-11.8%%) and Non-Durable Consumer Goods rose by 1.8%. Energy rose by 0.5%:

Evolution by province

The pattern of the year-on-year evolution of the Industrial Production Index by province was negative in the three provinces: Álava decreased by 7.9%, Gipuzkoa by 5.1% and Bizkaia was down by 0.7%.

The month-on-month evolution of the provinces, September 2008 compared to August 2008, was also negative in the three: it was down in Gipuzkoa by 3.6%, in Álava by 2.6% % and by 0.8% in Bizkaia.

Table: SEPTEMBER 2008. Variation rates (%) of the Industrial Production Index of the A.C. of the Basque Country.

(1) Year-on-year variation rate of the accumulated period from January to the last month of year t compared to the same period of the year t-1

Source: EUSTAT