RBI launches latest round of quarterly survey on manufacturing sector

MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India on Thursday launched latest round of quarterly order books, inventories and capacity utilisation survey (OBICUS) of manufacturing sector. "The survey provides valuable input for monetary policy formulation," the RBI said as it launched the 49th round of survey for the reference period January-March 2020. The RBI has been conducting the OBICUS of the manufacturing sector on a quarterly basis since 2008. The information collected in the survey includes quantitative data on new orders received during the reference quarter, backlog of orders, pending orders, total inventories with a breakup between work-in-progress (WiP) and finished goods (FG) inventories and item-wise production. The RBI further said that the company level data collected during the survey are treated as confidential and never disclosed. In the 48th round of the OBICUS for the quarter October-December 2019 as many as 704 manufacturing companies were covered. As per the last survey, capacity utilisation (CU) had declined to 68.6 per cent in the third quarter of 2019-20 from 69.1 per cent in the previous quarter. Also, orders received in Q3:2019-20 were lower compared with previous quarter as well as with the level a year ago.