Inventories increase in manufacturing

Manufacturing inventories continue to increase in value. All industries but one can report an increase. The value of total manufacturing inventories increased by 20.7 per cent from the third to the fourth quarter last year, when measured as yearly growth in trend series.

The trend series show that most industries had an increase in inventories from the third to the fourth quarter last year. Metal products, oil platforms and transport equipment have had the biggest increases with just over 35 per cent each. Electrical and optical equipment is the only industry that had a reduction in its inventories, with a decline of nearly nine per cent relative to the third quarter.

In basic metals the value of the inventories has risen by 6.7 per cent since the fourth quarter of 1997. The price levels of aluminium, copper and nickel have fallen during the same period by 26, 16 and 21 per cent respectively. This means that these industries have had a real volume growth during the past year. In anticipation of higher market prices, this trend will probably persist.

Compared with the fourth quarter of 1997 the value of the total manufacturing inventories has undergone a slight increase. However, there has been a change in the ratio of finished goods to unfinished goods. Inventories of finished goods have increased, while inventories of unfinished goods have undergone a decline.

New Statistics
Statistics on stocks. Manufacturing, fourth quarter 1998.
The statistics are published quarterly in the Weekly Bulletin of Statistics. For more information, contact: Hilde.Hagen@ssb.no, tel.: +47 21 09 47 45 or Jacob.A.Osnes@ssb.no, tel.: +47 21 09 47 24.

Weekly Bulletin issue no. 9, 1999