Among leaders of statistical competition we ought to mention manufacturers of car parts, trailers and semitrailers (by 21.2%), as well as of non-metal minerals, mostly building materials (by 18.8%). Their proportion in the general Latvian industry is not large, but the growth rates are impressive.
However, the industrial heavy hitters also showed visible growth: the gain in manufacturing industry made up 7%, in electric energy and gas supply – 5.1%, in mining industry and quarrying – 9.8%.
Growth in output of food production made up 6%, production of wood and wood products – 4.9%, metallurgic complete products – 4.6%. Increase was recorded in pharmaceutical industry.
In its turn production of paper and paper goods (fall by 11.8%) and textiles (by 4.4%) were counted among laggards in October.
The general growth of the industrial products labelled “Made in Latvia” over 10 months of this year made up 3.9 percent. The gain of about 4 percent would apparently become the result of 2016.
Next year the faster growth of industrial production up to 5 – 6 percent can be expected. This would be facilitated by the general improvements in export markets. This is evidenced by the accelerated rates of growth of the global economy up to 4 percent – thanks to visible improvements in the USA and China, as well as stabilization of the situation in the EU and in Russia.
While the progress of Latvian industry would be crippled by chronic shortage of investments.
And vice versa – machine building, which recently received considerable volumes of investments, would visibly speed up its growth and, perhaps, take away the name of the largest industry from wood processing industry, which development in anticipation of Brexit is being continuously hampered.
Food industry has a promising outlook for the next year, which, seemingly, has survived the crisis in the milk market. Plus — the emergent growth of investments in grain processing.
In its turn, moderate growth is waited in 2017 in consumer goods manufacturing, which is connected with the gain in consumer demand in Russia.
