Feb PMI indicates strong flow of new orders: Garg

Spurt in PMI indicates strong inflow of new orders and strengthening of manufacturing sector growth, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said Friday.

The country's manufacturing sector performance further strengthened in February and touched a 14-month high, driven by acceleration in sales, output and employment, a monthly survey showed.

The Nikkei India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) rose to 54.3 in February, from 53.9 in January, amid a robust improvement in business conditions. This is the 19th consecutive month that the manufacturing PMI remained above the 50-point mark. In PMI parlance, a print above 50 means expansion, while a score below that denotes contraction.

"Manufacturing PMI at 54.3 in Feb is 14 month high and indicates strong inflow of new orders. Q4 2018-19 should mark further strengthening of manufacturing GVA and upward movement of GDP growth," Garg said in a tweet.

As per official estimate released on Thursday, India's economic growth slipped to a 5-quarter low of 6.6 per cent in October-December period of 2018-19, mainly due to poor performance of farm, mining and manufacturing sectors.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO), which releases the national account data, had last month revised its forecast for GDP growth for 2017-18 to 7.2 per cent from the earlier estimate of 6.7 per cent. It also revised the actual growth rate in 2016-17 to 8.2 per cent from the 7.1 per cent estimated earlier.

The downward revision of GDP growth in the current fiscal to 7 per cent does not indicate slowing down of economy as it is calculated on the basis of higher growth projections by the CSO for the previous fiscal, Garg had said.