About 84.8 percent of businesses in the processing – manufacturing sector predicted expansion and stability in their production for the first quarter of 2020, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said.

(Illustrative photo: VNA) 

The GSO’s survey, conducted in Q4 of 2019, covered 6,500 companies representing the industry in the 63 provinces and centrally-run cities, with 90 percent of the interviewees responding.

Among them, 46.9 percent expected production growth and another 37.9 percent believed their activities will remain the same in Q1 compared to Q4 last year.

For the first half of 2020, 55.3 percent and 34 percent of the firms forecast expansion and stability in their operations, respectively, compared to the last six months of 2019.

Meanwhile, FDI companies showed the most optimism with 87.9 percent of them expecting growth and stability for January-March. They are followed by State-owned enterprises (85.2 percent) and non-State businesses (83.5 percent).

The respective percentages of firms with similar projections for this year’s first half stand at 91.5 percent, 89.9 percent, and 88.4 percent.

The GSO noted 59.5 percent of the interviewees expected increase in electronics, computer and optical product manufacturing for Q1; pharmaceutical production 56.5 percent; and food production and processing 51.4 percent.

They also predicted higher numbers of new export orders, with 86.6 percent and 91.5 percent respectively believing so for the first three months and the first half of 2020, compared to the same periods last year, the survey shows.