【TEJ Dictionary】Purchasing Managers’ Index, PMI

Discussion of PMI and Relative Index

🔸Introduction🔸

With the pandemic, we always feel the slump. However, it is not proper to define recession only by feelings. What we should refer to is accountable index. Purchasing Managers’ Index, PMI, is the one usually applied.

During late February, almost every governments have made PMI public and the information usually go viral. For example, Japan Feb Manufacturing PMI was 52.9 indicating positive performance for 13 consecutive months. Hence, this article would regard PMI of Taiwan and Japan as topics to discuss the relation between PMI and Macroeconomics.

🔸Highlights of this article🔸

Introduce PMI and relative index
Japan PMI

🔸Body Text🔸

1️⃣ PMI

Purchasing Managers’ Index is a synthetic index. Every month, this index would be made by regarding result of interviewing purchasing managers, whom are divided into Manufacturers and Non-manufacturers.

The index is ranged from 0 to 100, and 50 is the critical value. Index above 50 indicates the booming session of economy. On the other hand, index below 50 refers to the bust session. Taiwan Jan 2022 PMI was56.2 and prediction of newly added order reaches 52.6 was the 19th successive growth.

According to above intorduction, it is clear to understand that PMI is an investigating prediction index. Subsequently, by pairing other economic data , we would prove its reference reliability is qualified to be a leading index.

2️⃣ Relative index of PMI

Export Order, per month

Data of export order includes two parts, domestic manufacturing & overseas manufacturing(like OEM of consumer electronics). Therefore, it is possible that money value of export order is different from export value, but export order remains a leading index to observe exporting.

On 2/21/2022, Ministry of Economic Affairs, R.O.C. published that money value of export order was 58.87 billion USD, and YoY growth equal to 11.7% was a positive growth for 23 consecutive month.

YoY Growth of Export Value, per month

Growth rate of total export value compared to identical period in previous year. It is the index to judge real economic performance.

On 2/11/2022, Ministry of Finance, R.O.C. published that export value was 39.98 billion USD. The data declined by 1.8%, compared to last month. The YoY was positive 16.7%, and it was a positive growth for 19 consecutive month.

3️⃣ Graphics

Observing above image, we could conclude that PMI, red line, basically keeps the same trend as YoY Growth of Export Order, navy columns, and YoY Growth of Export Value, blue columns, which implies that PMI’s reference is accountable on judging macroeconomic performance.

4️⃣ Japan PMI

Japan PMI, red line in below image, keeps positive grwoth rate for 12 consecutive months, from 2021/2. As for the real economic performance, Ministry of Finance, Japan published Jan trade statistics on 2/17/2022. YoY growth rate of export value was 9.6%, columns in below image, which was the 11th successive growth. However, because price of power source increases a lot, deficit of import value in Jan reaches 2.091 trillion Japanese Yen, which is the highest in past 8 years. This might impact trade situation of Japan, but not affect the truth that PMI is reliable..

🔸Data Source ＆Code in TEJ Macro-database🔸

🔸Conclusion🔸

According to the article, you would find the reliability of PMI to measure the development of macroeconomics for countries focusing on export trade. On top of that, the result of analysis would be more reliable with the consideration of other economic indexes. However, it is clear that gathering data is time-consuming and TEJ Database is able to spare your time. Hence, if you have any demand on well-rounded financial data, please do not hesitate to send your inquiries or ideas by phone or by email to us.

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