New Zealand’s manufacturing sector experienced another decline in activity during April, according to the latest BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI).

The seasonally adjusted PMI for April was 49.1 (a PMI reading above 50.0 indicates that manufacturing is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining). Although this was 1 point up from March, it was still well below the long-term average activity rate of 53.0.

BusinessNZ’s Director, Advocacy Catherine Beard said that the stresses and strains of the wider economy appears to be playing out in the manufacturing sector.

“Five of the last seven months has seen New Zealand’s manufacturing sector in contraction. While the overall activity result has not strayed too far down into stronger levels of contraction, equally the sector seems unable to get back in expansion mode with the key sub-index values of Production (47.0) and New Orders (49.8) in April again not returning a positive result.

The proportion of negative comments again lifted to 70.3%, compared with 63.2% in March and 60.2% in February. Comments were largely similar to previous months, with price pressures, staffing issues and lower demand all discussed.

BNZ Senior Economist, Doug Steel stated that “New Zealand’s PMI may be soft, but it is broadly in line with the 49.6 reading for the global equivalent in April. The latter reflects sub-50 readings to various degrees in each of the US, EU, UK, Australia, Japan, and China”.