​Drivers Of Growth In The Manufacturing Sector

The manufacturing sector grew by 3.6 per cent in 2016, a reversal from the 5.1 per cent decline in 2015. The recovery of the sector was underpinned by growth in the electronics, biomedical manufacturing (BMS) and precision engineering clusters. Specifically, these three clusters contributed 4.4 percentage-points (pp), 2.6pp and 0.1pp to overall manufacturing growth in 2016 respectively. On the other hand, the transport engineering (-3.1pp), general manufacturing (-0.3pp) and chemicals (-0.1pp) clusters contributed negatively to the sector’s growth.

The electronics cluster expanded by 16 per cent in 2016, reversing the 6.8 per cent contraction in 2015.This strong outturn was driven by robust growth in the semiconductors segment (31 per cent). Indeed, the semiconductors segment contributed 19pp to the overall growth of the cluster, even as most of the other segments within the cluster weighed on growth.