Huge downturn in Hungarian industry: the weakest month in three years

Export-producing industries did well, but everything else did very poorly. Output of Hungary’s industrial sector fell by 8.3 percent year-on-year in April, after a 4.1 drop in the previous month, data released by the Central Statistical Office (KSH) on Wednesday show.

April output dropped by 5.8 percent when adjusted for the number of workdays. Month on month, output declined a seasonally and workday-adjusted 2.5 percent, MTI reports.

The last time a worse drop was recorded was in May 2020, when the first wave of the pandemic saw a mass shutdown of factories. Obviously, the 30 percent drop then is nothing compared to the drop now. However, it says a lot about the situation that in the three years since then, there hasn’t been a month as bad as this one, hvg.hu writes.

The performance was so poor despite the fact that the two most important sub-sectors (vehicle manufacturing and electrical equipment manufacturing, including batteries) managed to grow. Almost all other sectors, however, performed worse than a year ago, according to the data of KSH. This means that what can be sold abroad is still being produced in good quantities in Hungary, but weak domestic consumption is causing serious problems, hvg.hu explains.

Production in the first four months of the year was 4.3 percent lower than in the same period in 2022.