The industrial production index for Moldova rose by 50.4% y/y in April, reversing the 25.8% y/y contraction last April during the lockdown, resulting in an 11.6% advance over the past 24 months (5.7% y/y in annualised terms).

In Q1, Moldova's industry generated 6.1% more value-added compared to the same period in 2020, despite only 3.7% higher gross output, and contributed 1.4pp to the overall 1.8% y/y GDP advance.

In seasonally adjusted terms, the country’s industrial output reached a new record in April.

The full industrial recovery was partly due to the outstanding advance of the activity in the utilities sector (electricity and gas supply), where the output advanced by an annualised rate of 22% over the past 24 months. Historically, this seems to be a recovery after its sluggish performance in previous years.

The 24-month annualised increase was slightly smaller in the core manufacturing sector (+3.5%), and in seasonally adjusted terms the industrial output index in Moldova hasn’t yet reached the peak level of February 2020.

As regards the best performing industries, in terms of the past 24 months, the production of furniture soared by 34.5% (+80.9% compared to April 2019), while the processing of leather and furs (+23.8%), production of metallic constructions (+21.8%), metallurgy (+19%) and manufacturing of plastic and rubber parts (+13.3%) also performed well.

In contrast, food production (+1.0%) performed modestly and the production of beverages lost ground (-3.1%).