Estonia Industrial Output November 2007

Estonia's annual rate of industrial production growth slowed significantly in November, with production falling in areas as diverse as dairy products and wood production fell. Output, adjusted for working days, rose an annual 4.4 percent, compared with a 5.9 percent rate in October. Production fell a monthly 0.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, compared with a 1.3 percent increase in October. The economy is evidently slowing, although it would be hard to draw any definitive conclusion about how rapidly from this data.





Industrial output growth was hampered by a slowdown in manufacturing as companies faced increasing labor shortages with unemployment at a 16-year low while domestic demand has evidently started to cool. Estonian economic growth eased to 6.4 percent in the third quarter from 11.2 percent in 2006.




The sector of industry holding the largest share, i.e. the production of food, increased 4%. With regard to the branches of food production, the increase was observed in all branches except the production of milk products. The production of milk products, where the prices rose by more than one third during the year, decreased 4%. Output increased in all branches of machinery and apparatus manufacturing, mainly due to increase in exports. Compared to November of the previous year, the growth of production was the highest in the manufacture of precision instruments (37%).