The Order Books, Inventories and Capacity Utilisation Survey (OBICUS) captures actual data from the companies in the manufacturing sector. The current round of OBICUS, which is the 28th round in the series, captures data for Q3:2014-15. In all, 1,297 common (for last five quarters) manufacturing companies (Government: 49, Public: 903 and Private: 345) responded in this round of survey. The analysis is based on the data on order books, inventory levels for raw materials & finished goods, and capacity utilisation, received from these common set of companies.

Highlights:

Capacity Utilisation (CU): There is broad co-movement between capacity utilisation and de-trended IIP manufacturing (Chart 1). CU at the aggregate level, remained at the same level in Q3:2014-15 as that of the previous quarter. However, it stood at a lower level from that in same quarter of the previous year (Table 1).

Order Books: The new orders growth showed a decline and became negative in Q3:2014-15 both on a year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter basis (Chart 2).

Inventory to Sales Ratio: The finished goods inventory to sales ratio declined to 17 per cent in Q3:2014-15. The raw material inventory to sales ratio increased in Q3:2014-15 as compared to the previous quarter. Both, raw material inventory to sales ratio (RMI/S) and finished goods inventory to sales ratio (FGI/S), remained more or less at the same level as that of same quarter of previous year (Chart 3).

ANNEX

¹ The 27th round (Q2:2014-15) survey results were released on January 2, 2015 on the RBI website. The survey results are those of the respondents and are not necessarily shared by the Reserve Bank of India.