Manufacturing new orders drop 15% in December 2020

The value of manufacturers' new orders in Finland fell by 15.1 percent year-on-year in December 2020, Statistics Finland said on Wednesday, reported Xinhua.

During 2020, orders fell by 11.4 percent year-on-year.

In December 2020, companies received more new orders than 12 months earlier in the chemical industry only, where orders rose by 47.8 percent year-on-year.

However, orders declined in the country's other manufacturing sub-industries. Orders booked by manufacturers of paper and paper board products declined by 5.1 percent year-on-year, and the drop in new orders recorded by the metal industry was 24.5 percent year-on-year.

The statistical agency attributed the decline to the exceptionally high value of new orders in the corresponding period of the previous year, generated by, for example, large new orders in the shipbuilding industry.

Compared to 2019, orders received by Finnish companies dropped every month except November, according to Statistics Finland.

Jukka Appelqvist, an economist at Danske Bank Finland, said on social media that the figures were not as bad as they first seemed. In fact, he said that implementation of new orders in December was quite good.

Pasi Sorjonen, chief economist at Akava, the Confederation of Unions for Professional and Managerial Staff in Finland, pointed out that orders in the chemical industry have been growing strongly for a couple of months.

On Wednesday, Statistics Finland also published data on the country's industrial output in December 2020. Industrial output went down by about 0.9 percent month-on-month and was 2.5 percent below the December 2019 level. Year-on-year, the drop in industrial output was 3.1 percent.

Output increased in two main industries only in December 2020. The chemical industry grew by 13.9 percent and mining and quarrying by 8.5 percent. Output fell the most in metal industry, by 6.3 percent, and in the electrical and electronics industry, by 3.4 percent compared to December 2019.