OBICUS Survey on the Manufacturing sector - Q1:2020-21

Published on October 09, 2020

OBICUS Survey on the Manufacturing sector - Q1:2020-21

Today, the Reserve Bank released the results of the 50th round of the Order Books, Inventories and Capacity Utilisation Survey (OBICUS) for the quarter April-June 2020 covering 462 manufacturing companies. The survey provides a snapshot of demand conditions in India’s manufacturing sector¹.

Highlights:

At the aggregate level, capacity utilisation (CU) fell sharply from 69.9 per cent in Q4:2019-20 to 47.3 per cent in Q1:2020-21, as domestic economic activity was impacted severely by lockdown imposed during the quarter to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Seasonally adjusted CU also declined to 48.2 per cent in Q1:2020-21 from 68.2 per cent in the previous quarter.

Manufacturing companies received considerably lower orders during Q1:2020-21 when compared to that in the previous quarter as well as their levels a year ago (Chart 2).

Sales, raw material inventory (RMI) and finished goods inventory (FGI) declined during Q1:2020-21; the fall in sales was, however, sharper than that in RMI and FGI. As a result, the ratios of FGI and RMI to sales increased during the quarter (Chart 3).

Historical time series have been made available in excel format.

ANNEX 1: Data Tables

Table 1.1: IIP*-Manufacturing and Capacity Utilisation (CU)
Quarter	Number of responding companies	Capacity Utilisation	IIP-Manufacturing (Quarterly Average)	De-trended Quarterly IIP-Manufacturing
Q1:2019-20	781	73.6	130.3	5.6
Q2:2019-20	819	69.1	129.4	5.0
Q3:2019-20	700	68.6	130.8	6.8
Q4:2019-20	349	69.9	127.9	4.3
Q1:2020-21	406	47.3	78.0	-45.1
*: Index of Industrial Production (Base: 2011-12)

Table 1.2: Order Books (Q1:2019-20 to Q1:2020-21) (Based on common set of 63 companies in 9 quarters)**
Quarter	Amount (₹ Crores)			Q-o-Q Growth (%)***			Y-o-Y Growth (%)
Quarter	Average Backlog Orders	Average New Order Book	Average Pending Orders	Average Backlog Orders	Average New Order Book	Average Pending Orders	Average Backlog Orders	Average New Order Book	Average Pending Orders
Q1:2019-20	165.0	172.8	169.6	0.5	-6.0	2.6	0.6	7.5	9.1
Q2:2019-20	170.9	164.4	179.4	3.6	-4.9	5.8	10.0	-6.1	9.1
Q3:2019-20	179.4	168.8	186.5	5.0	2.7	4.0	9.0	0.7	13.7
Q4:2019-20	185.7	167.5	192.3	3.5	-0.8	3.1	13.1	-8.9	16.3
Q1:2020-21	192.2	101.9	99.1	3.5	-39.2	-48.4	16.5	-41.1	-41.5
: As required for calculating growth rates in recent 5 quarters. *: Not seasonally adjusted

Table 1.3: Average Sales and Inventories (Q1:2019-20 to Q1:2020-21) (Based on common set of 177 companies in 5 quarters)
Quarter	Amount (₹ Crores)					Ratio (per cent)
Quarter	Average Sales	Average Total Inv	Average FG Inv	Average WiPInv	Average RM Inv	Total Inv/Sales	FG Inv/Sales	RMInv/Sales
Q1:2019-20	908.8	531.2	157.8	68.8	304.6	58.5	17.4	33.5
Q2:2019-20	919.8	464.2	139.8	65.2	259.2	50.5	15.2	28.2
Q3:2019-20	941.9	493.5	149.4	65.3	278.8	52.4	15.9	29.6
Q4:2019-20	882.5	482.4	133.0	42.4	307.1	54.7	15.1	34.8
Q1:2020-21	502.5	445.3	118.4	71.2	255.7	88.6	23.6	50.9
RM - Raw Material; WiP - Work in progress; FG - Finished Goods; Inv – Inventory.

¹ The survey responses are voluntary. The 49th round of the OBICUS covering 364 manufacturing companies with reference period as January-March 2020 was released on the RBI website on August 06, 2020.