Canterbury Manufacturers in August PMI results
The PMI survey completed by Business New Zealand and supported by the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association rolls in a
bigger sample than the CMA business survey and is index based. “Whilst our own survey is smaller we do ask more
questions and work with real sales figures,” said John Walley, CEO of the Canterbury Manufacturers' Association.
“Reading the two surveys together makes for better understanding of what might be going on in the manufacturing sector
locally and across New Zealand.”
“Our own respondents tend to be in the higher added value area and this could skew our subset of the wider survey, but
we have been on the scene for a while and have pretty well demonstrated the leading indicator nature of our own survey,”
said Mr Walley.
Canterbury appears to leads the charge with strong growth in forward orders which would probably be a proxy for our
confidence measure. However the CMA survey data allows a deeper look and the 60/40 split in sales decreases to sales
increases, when taken with our leading indicator of sales falling, perhaps paints a softer and more worrying forward
picture.
“The Council of Canterbury Manufacturer’s Association thinks that further out the future is not so comforting and that
lifting the importance and performance of the manufacturing sector is vital to the stronger economic development of New
Zealand,” said John Walley.