Eurostat says that industrial production fell more than expected in March.
Industrial output in the Eurozone fell by 4.1% from February to March, which was much more than the market expected. This news came from the statistics office Eurostat on Monday.
In terms of a year, the number went down by 1.4%. Industrial production in the EU fell by 1.3% from one year to the next and 3.6% from one month to the next.
The drop was the biggest since the decline caused by the flu. The economic downturn was caused by a sharp drop in the production of capital goods, such as buildings and tools used to make products and provide services. These dropped by 15.4%, a big reason for the downturn. The output of intermediate goods fell by 1.8%, the production of energy fell by 0.9%, and the result of non-durable consumer goods fell by 0.8%.
Eurostat says that most of the big economies in the group that uses the euro currency saw significant drops in output, with Ireland having the biggest drop at 26.3%. Industrial production fell by 3.1% in Germany, 1.1% in France, and 0.6% in Italy. Spain, on the other hand, was one of the few relatively bright spots. Industrial production there grew by 1.4%.
Economists have been raising concerns and warning that the outlook for the industry in the coming months doesn’t look good. This is because weaker demand is cancelling out the effect of lower energy costs for businesses that use a lot of energy.