RBI released 49th round of OBICUS

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the 49th round of quarterly OBICUS (Order books, inventories, and capacity utilization survey) of the manufacturing sector. The survey includes the reference period January-March 2020.

OBICUS:
♦ The OBICUS survey will provide valuable input for monetary policy formulation.
♦ The Central Bank has conducted the OBICUS of the manufacturing sector on a quarterly basis since 2008.
♦ The data 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. 
♦ RBI also stated that the company level data collected during the survey will be treated as confidential and never disclosed. 
♦ In the 48th round of the OBICUS for the quarter, October-December 2019 over 704 manufacturing companies were covered. The last survey showed that capacity utilization (CU) had declined to 68.6% in the third quarter of 2019-20 from 69.1% in the previous quarter.
♦ The orders that were received in the third quarter of the year 2019-20 were less when compared with the previous quarter.