UK manufacturing sees new export orders at February 2011 high
The UK's manufacturing sector is still roaring – but there are two small pieces of bad news.
Markit's manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) shows the UK dropping to 56.7 in January. Analysts had expected a fall to 57.
And December's headline figure of 57.3 has been revised down slightly, to 57.2.
Any number above 50 implies that the sector is expanding, but this fall suggests that the pace of that expansion is slowing. To give the figure some context, Eurozone manufacturing PMI is at just 54 this January.
The good news this month comes from the new export orders component of the survey, at its highest in nearly three years.
In recent months the red hot manufacturing PMIs have been somewhat more impressive than the official manufacturing production data, which has turned out to be a much more tepid data series.
Rob Dobson, senior economist at survey compilers Markit, says that while "the pace of output expansion has cooled slightly in recent months, growth is still tracking at one of the highest rates in the 22-year survey history."