United States Industrial production decelerate

Industrial production in United States eased by 0.5% in February 2008 from January 2008 levels. Infact, the country has been witnessing fall in the pace of growth from 0.4% in November 2007 to 0.2% in December 2007, which came down to 0.1% in January 2008 and finally a fall by 0.5% in February 2008, on a sequential basis over the previous month. On a y-o-y basis, the industrial production grew by 1% in February 2008 over February 2007 levels.

Much of the decrease in February 2008 has been attributed to a drop of 3.7% in the output of utilities. On the positive side, the mines output went up by 0.4% but on the flipside, the output of manufacturing sector decreased by 0.2%. As a result, the capacity utilization rate for total industry in February fell 0.6 percentage point, to 80.9%, which is the lowest rate since November 2005.