COLOMBO: According to the monthly Index of industrial Production (IIP) released by the Census and Statistics Department, the volume of industrial production in Sri Lanka has increased by 0.3 percent in June 2017 compared to the same month in 2016.
Among the manufacturing industries, volume of ‘Basic pharmaceutical products’ increased by 19.5%, ‘Basic metal products’ by 14.0% and ‘Fabricated Metal Products’ by 12.7% during the month of June, 2017 compared to that of June, 2016 while the volume of food products has increased by 2.3%. However, the volume of ‘Coke and refined petroleum product’, ‘Chemical and Chemical products’ and ‘Beverages’ reported decreases by 29.6%, 12.1% and 9.2% respectively during this period. The industrial production of the manufacturing sector for the second quarter of 2017 has increased by 1.4% compared to the same quarter in 2016. The IIP describes changes of the volume of goods and services produced over time. It is an important indicator of economic performance and its main purpose is to provide a measure of the short-term changes in the volume of industrial production over a given period of time. The IIP is based on year 2015 as 100 production.