HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam’s Index of Industrial Production (IIP) expanded 10.1 per cent year-on-year in the first 11 months of 2018, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).

This was a steady increase from the beginning of the second half of the year, with 10.5 per cent in the first six months, 10.9 per cent in the first seven months, 11.5 per cent in the first eight months, 10.6 per cent in the first nine months and 10.4 per cent in the first 10 months.

In November alone, the IIP increased 9.6 per cent compared to the same period last year.

GSO’s industrial economics experts have said reforms in corporate governance policies have facilitated more favourable conditions and reduced inconvenience for manufacturing and business operations in the private sector. That contributed to promoting production of industrial enterprises.

The processing and manufacturing sector, holding a large part in the domestic industrial production, reported high growth in IIP at 12.2 per cent while IIP of the electricity production and distribution, and the water supply and waste-sewage treatment sectors reached 9.2 per cent and 4.5 per cent, respectively.

The country’s IIP growth rate in the first 11 months may be even higher if the mining industry’s IIP did not reduce 2 per cent year-on-year, according to the experts.

Some key industrial products achieved very high production growth in 11 months such as gasoline and oil (51.8 per cent), raw iron and steel (40.9 per cent), television (23.9 per cent), liquefied gas (22.4 per cent), synthetic fabric (21.3 per cent), fish feed (17.5 per cent), sugar (14.3 per cent) and telephone parts (12.4 per cent).

Many sectors gained IIP growth rates at between 11 per cent and 22.3 per cent, such as coke fuel production, petroleum refining, metal production, chemicals and pharmaceuticals production, motor vehicle, paper, textile and electronics-computers.

However, some others had slight growth or even down in IIP due to difficulties in production and raw material inputs or difficulties in consumption. They included motorbikes (up 4.2 per cent), urea and NPK fertilisers (up 3 per cent), fresh milk (up 1.8 per cent), animal feed (up 1 per cent) and mobile phones (down 3.3 per cent). Especially, crude oil fell 11.9 per cent in production year-on-year.

The IIP in the groups of private and foreign-invested enterprises increased 4.1 per cent and 3.4 per cent, respectively. Meanwhile the State-owned sector reported a decrease of 0.9 per cent.

The central coastal province of Hà Tĩnh led the nation with IIP growth of 93.2 per cent in the January-November period. The result was mainly thanks to the Hưng Nghiệp Formosa Hà Tĩnh Steel Company.

Meanwhile, Nghi Sơn oil refinery helped the central province of Thanh Hóa hold the second position, with its IIP rising by 33.6 per cent.

The capital city of Hà Nội and HCM City reported IIP rises of 7.4 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively. — VNS