Manufacturing growth stalled last month, bringing a three-year run of recovery in the battered sector to an abrupt halt, a key survey showed yesterday.
In findings that fuelled fears that the economy is on course for a severe downturn into next year, the latest CIPS purchasing managers’ survey of industry showed that overall manufacturing activity stagnated during May.
In a worse-than-expected fall, the headline index of manufacturing activity from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) fell from 50.8 in April to 50.0 for last month, on a scale where any reading under this level indicates that the sector is shrinking. It marked the weakest result in the survey since July 2005.
Industrial businesses’ orders fell for a fifth month in a row, with