The Order Books, Inventories and Capacity Utilisation Survey (OBICUS,) 20th round in the series, was conducted for Q3:2012-13. In all, 1,166 common manufacturing companies (42 Government companies, 832 public limited companies and 292 private limited companies) responded on capacity utilisation. The analysis is based on the data on order books, inventory levels for raw materials and finished goods, and capacity utilisation, received from these companies for past five quarters, i.e., Q3:2011-12 to Q3:2012-13.

Highlights:

• New orders picked up marginally after sequential lowering in previous two quarters. However, order books declined in Q3:2012-13 on Y-o-Y basis.  (Table 1)

• Capacity utilisation at the aggregate level remained more or less at the previous quarter’s level; but was much lower than a year ago (Table 2).

• There is broad co-movement between capacity utilisation and de-trended Index on Industrial Production (IIP) manufacturing (Chart 1).

• Finished goods inventory to sales ratio reached its lowest level in the latest five quarters whereas raw material inventory to sales ratio surged further to reach its highest level in the five quarters  (Table 3).