New Delhi, July 1 (KNN) As per the S&P Global India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), India’s manufacturing sector’s growth is down to the lowest level in nine months.

The decline in growth is due to the inflation pressures. The Inflation worries have also stifled business confidence sentiment to a 27-month low in June with just 4 per cent of firms expecting growth a year from now.

“A reading of 50 on the PMI indicates no change in level of activity from the previous month. Factory orders and production rose for the twelfth straight month in June, but in both cases the rates of expansion eased to nine-month lows,” S&P Global said in a statement.

New export orders witnessed a growth for the third successive month in June and employment rose for the fourth successive month.

Pollyanna De Lima, economics associate director at S&P Global Market Intelligence Unit said, “the manufacturing sector displayed encouraging resilience on the face of acute price pressures, rising interest rates, rupee depreciation and a challenging geopolitical landscape.”

“Yet, there was a broad-based slowdown in growth across a number of measures such as factory orders, production, exports, input buying and employment as clients and businesses restricted spending amid elevated inflation,” she added. 

Lima highlighted that the rate of input cost inflation faced by producers remained high, but was the dawdling in three months, as were the pass-through of costs through higher charges to consumers. Firms reported increases for a wide range of inputs, including chemicals, electronics, energy, metals and textiles.

There was Optimism regarding the supply chains, with the most recent results showing the first shortening of input lead times since the beginning of COVID-19.  (KNN Bureau)