'Economic growth spurred manufacturing activity to 8-month high'

NEW DELHI: India’s manufacturing sector activity gained momentum in July, hitting an eight-month high driven by a significant uptick in business orders, a monthly survey said on Monday.

The seasonally adjusted S&P Global India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index rose from 53.9 in June, to 56.4 in July, highlighting the strongest improvement in the health of the sector in eight months.

The July PMI data pointed to an improvement in overall operating conditions for the 13th straight month. In PMI parlance, a print above 50 means expansion while a score below 50 denotes contraction.

“The Indian manufacturing industry recorded a welcome combination of faster economic growth and softening inflation during July,” Pollyanna De Lima, Economics Associate Director at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said.

Lima further said “output expanded at the fastest pace since last November, a trend that was matched by the more forward-looking indicator of new orders. Although the upturn in demand gained strength, there were clear signs that capacity pressures remained mild as backlogs rose only marginally and job creation remained subdued.” The aggregate new order intakes rose substantially in July, recovering the growth momentum lost in June. “The latest increase was in fact the most pronounced since last November, with quicker expansions recorded in all three broad areas of the manufacturing industry,” as per the survey. “With incidence of shortages diminishing, the rate of input cost inflation eased to an 11-month low in July, subsequently dragging down the rate of increase in output prices to the weakest in four months,” Lima said