Manufacturers see better capacity utilisation: RBI survey
1 min read . Updated: 02 Jan 2015, 08:00 PM IST
PremiumCapacity utilization in the September quarter was 71%, compared with 72.8% in the year-ago period
Mumbai: India’s manufacturers were able to better utilize their capacity in the second quarter of the current financial year compared with the three months ended 30 June, although it was lower than the year-earlier period, a survey by the Reserve Bank of India has found.
Capacity utilization in the September quarter was 71%, compared with 72.8% in the year-ago period, according to the 27th round of Order Books, Inventories and Capacity Utilisation Survey (OBICUS). It fell to a multi-year low of 69.4% in the fiscal first quarter.
The survey was conducted on 1,288 manufacturing companies, among which 49 were from the government, 896 from publicly listed and 343 from private companies.
New orders declined in the second quarter on a year-on-year basis and grew at a lower rate of 5.6% compared with previous quarter, the survey said.
Average new orders grew 12% in the June quarter, while in the year-ago quarter, new orders grew 9.5%.
The finished goods inventory-to-sales ratio in the financial second quarter remained flat from the first and stood at 18%.
In a separate survey on industrial outlook, the central bank found that the companies are bit more bullish in the three months ended December compared with the preceding quarter. The business expectation index for the fiscal third quarter was at 117.7 compared with 106.3 in the second quarter.
