KUALA LUMPUR: The Industrial Production Index rose by 4.2 per cent in April, supported by strong growth in the manufacturing sector.
The Statistics Department said the manufacturing sector, which grew by 6.7 per cent, was led by three major sub sectors – electrical and electronics (E&E) products (9.7 per cent), food, beverages and tobacco (15.4 per cent) and petroleum, chemical, rubber and plastic products (3.0 per cent).
It said both mining and electricity indexes declined by 2.0 and 1.5 per cent, respectively.
In the case of mining, it was due to the 6.6 per cent decrease in Crude Oil index. The Natural Gas index rose 4.0 per cent.
Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector recorded a strong growth of 15.6 for April, rising to RM60.5 billion as compared to RM52.3 billion reported a year ago.
The significant increase in sales value in April was due to the increase in E&E products (17.3 per cent) petroleum, chemical, rubber and plastic products (18.2 per cent) and non-metallic mineral products, basic metal and fabricated metal (12.3 per cent).
These three sub-sectors contributed 80.1 per cent to the sales value of the manufacturing sector.