Today, the Reserve Bank released the results of the 57th round of the quarterly Order Books, Inventories and Capacity Utilisation Survey (OBICUS), which provides a snapshot of demand conditions in India’s manufacturing sector¹ during January-March 2022. The survey covered 765 manufacturing companies.

Highlights:

• At the aggregate level, the capacity utilisation (CU) in the manufacturing sector rose to 75.3 per cent in Q4:2021-22 from 72.4 per cent recorded in the previous quarter, showing improvement for the third successive quarter. (Chart 1 and Table 1).

• Manufacturing companies received more new orders during Q4:2021-22 as compared with the level in the previous quarter as well as in the corresponding quarter a year ago (Chart 2 and Table 2A).

• With significant improvement in demand condition, companies augmented their inventories to meet new orders: as a ratio to sales, the finished goods inventory (FGI) and raw material inventory (RMI) increased during Q4:2021-22 (Chart 3 and Table 3A).

Note- Please see the excel file for time series data.

ANNEX 1: Data Tables

Note: The computations of order book growths and inventory to sales ratios are based on methodology given in the RBI press release dated October 8, 2021 (link: /en/web/rbi/-/publications/obicus-survey-on-the-manufacturing-sector-for-q1-2021-22-20650) and not on the basis of averages given in the above tables.

¹ The survey responses are voluntary. Results of the previous survey round were released on the Bank’s website on April 08, 2022.