The Chancellor takes some comfort this week from the latest UK Gross Domestic Product figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing that growth was +0.3% higher than in the previous quarter. The media headlines focused on “UK avoids triple dip recession”, which would have been the consequence had these quarterly figures been negative.
Detailed figures showing the returns for manufacturing sectors of particular interest to the MTA will not be out for a number of weeks but are expected to reflect the positive trend for capital goods in recent months. This is supported by results from the CBI’s Industrial Trends Survey for the past three months, also out this week, which showed an increase in output over the past quarter. As this Survey is one of the CBI’s more detailed outputs and includes questions about investment intentions it carries some useful indicators. The Survey showed there was a small improvement in the balance for investment intentions for plant & machinery, continuing a run of broadly positive results.
Taken as a whole the news must be seen as positive for the manufacturing technologies sector and for those companies involved in export markets, especially in Asia, there are still enormous opportunities. The MTA has been co-ordinating the UK Pavilion at CIMT in Beijing this week and initial feedback from members exhibiting has been very upbeat. UK companies are being encouraged to explore these new, expanding markets and the UKTI has just announced details of its Export Week programme in May. One of the master classes on the first day is entitled: Trade Finance Options when entering High Growth Markets. See the Friday Brief story for more details.
Congratulations this week should go to MTA member Renishaw for being awarded a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category.
A date for your diary is the rescheduled MTA/Warwick Manufacturing Group Seminar on Additive Manufacturing, which will now be held at Warwick on Thursday 13 June. Full details are in Friday Brief.
Have a great weekend.