Laughing as you sink

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Geographic distribution of new car sales

We have been tracking the new car sales figures released each month by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI).  These figures come out within a day or two of the month-end and give a instant insight into a key retail sector.
For the four months to April, SIMI’s figures give an increase of 38.3% on new car sales in the same four months last year.  The Central Statistics Office also produce data on new cars on registrations.  This is much more detailed than the SIMI data but the cost of this is a delay in the release of the figures.  The CSO have two datasets of interest

1. Vehicle Registrations collected from VRT returns to the Revenue Commissioners
2. Vehicle Licensing collected from license plate numbers issued by licensing authorities

The Vehicle Licensing statistics allow us to get a geographic breakdown of the number of new cars licensed in each licensing area.  Ireland has 30 licensing areas corresponding to the geographic identifiers used on license plate numbers.
The Vehicle Licensing figures indicate that for the first four months of the year there was a 35.1% increase in the number of new passenger cars licensed compared to the same four months last year.  This is broadly in line the the SIMI figures.
However using the CSO’s data we can get a breakdown of this by region.  The top five areas for the first four months of the year are:
Four of the top five licensing authorities are in the south-east of the country.  On this list Kilkenny is also eighth with an annual increase of 46.8%.
The bottom five licensing areas are:

The two things to note here are the inclusion of Dublin in the bottom five, the country’s largest licensing area, and the negative figure for Limerick City, the only recorded drop in the country.  By contrast Limerick County ranked 14th with an increase in car licensing of 42.2%.
Although in the bottom five, the increase of 2,214 in new passenger car licenses in Dublin City and County is greater than the combined increase of 1,751 recorded for the top five licensing areas in the first table.
A table of the data for the first four months of the year for all 30 licensing authorities is available here. 
Finally, in percentage terms April was the best month of the year so far with an increase of  72.7% in new passenger car registrations on the same month last year.  Limerick City continues to be the poorest performing area with a drop of 56.8% on last year.  Waterford City and Roscommon also recorded drops.  At the other end, nine licensing areas had an increase of more than 100%.  Included here is the region of Cork City and County (+133.2%) which accounted for more than one-eighth of total licenses issued.  Full table here. Tweet

Core Inflation remains unchanged

The release of the April CPI figures from the CSO suggests that deflation is easing.  The headline rate of deflation eased from –3.1% in March to –2.1% in April.  However if remove the effect of two categories

1. Energy Products make up 7.8% of the overall index and rose from 2.7% in the month and are up 9.1% in the year.
2. Mortgage Interest makes up 6.7% of the index and rose 2.9% in the month and is down 0.7% on the year.

Removing these gives us a measure of core inflation we have been following for a number of months.  Although the overall inflation rate has become less negative this core inflation rate is largely unchanged.  It was -2.8% in March and remains –2.8% in April.

The overall index is being pulled up because of increases in energy costs (prices and taxes) because the huge drops in mortgage interest after the ECB rate cuts took place more than 12 months ago and are now out of the 12 month measure of inflation. Tweet

Industrial Production drops back slightly

After the big gain seen in January, the latest CSO release shows that industrial production volume has fallen back slightly for the last two months.  Even with these slight falls the long-term trend appears to be heading upwards.  However, this may not hold up to closer scrutiny.

The CSO have revised the slight increase shown in the provisional figures for February to a slight decrease.  The initial 1.2% monthly increase has been revised to a 1.3% decrease.  There was also a monthly decrease of 2.6% in March.   Even with these drops, the huge increase in January means the annual change in  industrial production is still positive. 

However it could be that the one-off monthly increase of 20% that occurred in January is masking the actual trend.  If we look at the monthly changes, these have been negative for five of the past six months.

Industrial production has shown monthly decreases for 15 of the past 24 months.  While the annual change remained positive in March, as it has for the first three months of the year, if the recent month on month trend continues (excluding the January blip) we could find industrial production dropping back below the levels seen last year.  The release of the April figures in a month’s time will shed light on this. Tweet

Retail Sales climb again

After an apparent kick-start in February the muted recovery of retail sales continued again in March.  The current release of the Retail Sales Index indicates this.

The annual change by volume has been positive for the past two months.  The annual change by value remains negative, because of price effects and possible bargain hunting, but has eased for the sixth month in a row to –1.6%.  We are a long way from the rates of decline seen 12 months ago.
Of course, the caveat is that the all-businesses index is heavily weighted towards the motor trades.  Motor trades make up 29% of the index in March and with new car sales in March up 78% on the same month last year, according to SIMI, this is bound to have a big effect on the all-businesses index. 
Here we look at the index excluding motor trades.

Here we see that the annual declines have yet to unwind. Excluding motor trades, retail sales by value (-5.3%) and volume (-1.2%) are still lower than this time last year.  Looking at the more recent monthly changes we see a more positive picture.  When compared to February both value (+0.7%) and volume (+0.6%)  have increased.
By volume, the monthly change in retail sales excluding motor trades has been positive for the first three months of the year with increases of 0.5%, 1.0% and 0.6%.  We previously thought that the monthly change by value had been positive for February, but the preliminary estimate of +0.2% has been revised to –0.1% in the current release.
Looking at the actual index values we can see the slight upswing in the volume index represented by the above monthly increases.  For the value index, it does appear that the index has ‘bottomed out’ but the signs of growth following a jump of 1.2% in January eased somewhat with the 0.1% drop in February. The 0.7% increase in March puts us back in a positive direction again.
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