Slovak industry recovered in October as expected

Slovak industry was recovering in October 2017, thus confirming positive expectations, said UniCredit Bank Czech Republic and Slovakia analyst Ľubomir Koršňák. He was commenting on the latest industrial output figures released by the Slovak Statistics Office on Tuesday. The key processing industry in particular posted revitalisation, with year-on-year growth in output accelerating from 1.7 percent to 5.5 percent. The energy sector continued to fuel industrial growth as well, although its y-o-y growth rate decelerated from 9.7 percent to 6.4 percent. Conversely, output in the mining sector kept falling, going down by 4.8 percent y-o-y in October. According to Slovenská Sporitelňa analyst Katarina Muchová, Slovakia's industrial growth was mainly driven by the production of metals in October. Car production rose by 1.8 percent y-o-y, having only a moderate effect on industrial output growth. "We expect solid growth to continue in the last two months of the year, although December will probably be influenced by Christmas operational breaks at several industrial manufacturers," added Muchová.