JOHANNESBURG, 10 FEBRUARY 2022 – Amidst the challenges experienced in the economy and industry at large during the year 2021, the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (SEIFSA) is encouraged by manufacturing data released by Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) today.
| Total manufacturing production decreased by 0.1 percent on a year-on-year basis in December 2021, compared to November 2021. Overall manufacturing production performance registering 6.4 percent for 2021 compared to -12.1 percent in 2020. Total manufacturing sales increased by 10.5 percent year-on-year in December 2021 from 8.9 percent in November 2021. In 2021, manufacturing sales increased by 16.5 percent compared to -10.1 percent for 2020. |
The Metals and Engineering (M&E) sector’s annual performance was generally in line with that of the broader manufacturing production data. Total M&E production increased by an average of 1.5 percent on a year-on-year basis in December 2021. In 2021, M&E production increased by an average of 91,1 percent compared to -13.7 percent in 2020, whilst total sales increased by an average of 13.6 percent to R67.4 billion in December 2021. Overall, total M&E sales increased by 59.5 percent to R925.9 billion in 2021.
| SEIFSA Economist, Palesa Molise stated that the increase in manufacturing output and specifically in the M&E sector bodes well with total manufacturing capacity utilisation data, which on average improved to 77.6 percent in 2021 compared with 71.4 percent in 2020.
Within the M&E sector, capacity utilisation significantly improved on average to 76.2 percent in 2021 compared to 67.1 percent in 2020. The positive performance in manufacturing output is encouraging as it filters down to companies in the M&E sub-sectors, which are under duress. Moreover, given the difficult commercial and operational environment, on-going COVID-19 challenges, weak job numbers, rising fuel costs, rising energy costs and a volatile exchange rate continuous to place strain on production levels. This highlights the urgent need for policy intervention to support this growth momentum in the manufacturing sector, Ms Molise said. Ahead of the President’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) tonight, we hope to see more emphasis and action aimed at assisting the M&E sector, as the sector is heavily reliant on demand from key Government projects to boost its production and sales, especially for products such as steel and other related downstream products. Visit us to see our full-service offering |