The production of goods and services of the country, as measured by the cycle trend series of the Monthly Index of Economic Activity (Imae), registered an year-on-year variation of 3% in February 2018, which implies a deceleration of 0.1 percentage point compared to what was observed in the previous month. On the other hand, the average rate for the first two months was 3.1%
In February 2018, nine of the fifteen groups of activities that make up the indicator showed a slowdown in the annual growth rate.
Manufacturing, education and health services were the activities that contributed most to the evolution of the indicator in February 2018. The manufacturing industry grew 3.0%, based on the production of companies located both in the special and definitive regime. In the first case, the manufacture of food products (canned fish, palm oil, and concentrates for the preparation of soft drinks), as well as medical devices (catheters, transfusion equipment, other medical instruments, breast implants, eye prostheses and syringes) and cotton yarns were the most important productions; while in the second, pharmaceutical products, coffee and meat stood out.
The construction industry saw a decrease of -2.8%. This behavior was focused on construction with a private destination with a variation of -4.6%, mainly explained in the construction of residential buildings, while the construction of non-residential buildings and infrastructure works increased, which partially compensated the contraction indicated above.
On the other hand, construction with public destiny grew 9.5%, particularly due to the development of educational infrastructure of the Ministry of Public Education, as well as to the works related to the Moín container terminal.