On April 30, 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that China's Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' index (official manufacturing PMI index) in April was 47.4%, which continued to fall by 0.7 percentage points compared with last month and was below the critical point for two consecutive months. The non manufacturing business activity index was 41.9%, down 6.5 percentage points from the previous month, second only to February 2020. By item:
(1) affected by the epidemic, the decline trend of enterprise production and sales has expanded. The production index and new order index were 44.4% and 42.6%, down 5.1 percentage points and 6.2 percentage points respectively compared with the previous month, showing the multi-point spread of the epidemic in mid March and the negative impact of comprehensive and strict control of the epidemic on economic production and sales after the outbreak in a few key cities.
(2) enterprises have relatively stable inventory and weak willingness to expand production. The raw material inventory index was 46.5%, down 0.8 percentage points from the previous month. It is still suppressed by the price rise of upstream raw materials (the purchase price index of raw materials is 64.2%, which has remained above 60% for three consecutive months). In addition, under the background of strict epidemic prevention policies, enterprises tend to be cautious about demand recovery and strictly control inventory.
(3) policy support and differentiated relief measures failed to maintain the prosperity of small and medium-sized enterprises. Large enterprises 48.1%, down 3.2 percentage points from the previous month; Medium sized enterprises 47.5%, down 1 percentage point from the previous month; Small enterprises 45.6%, down 1 percentage point from the previous month. Mainly due to the non discrimination principle of epidemic control (city closure and embargo) measures, large enterprises with a large range of production organizations were unable to give full play to their system advantages and were forced to suspend production. However, small and medium-sized enterprises have received epidemic prevention, so the impact of prevention and control upgrading is relatively small.
The landscape of the construction industry can be maintained, and the landscape of the service industry has dropped significantly. In April, the non manufacturing business activity index was 41.9%, down 6.5 percentage points from the previous month, only better than the level at the beginning of 2020. Among them, the business activity index of the construction industry was 52.7%, down 5.4 percentage points from the previous month; The business activity index of the service industry was 40%, down 6.7 percentage points from the previous month. Mainly affected by the epidemic prevention and control measures, 19 of the 21 industries are in the contraction range. Among them, the business activity index of contact aggregation industries such as air transportation, accommodation, catering, ecological protection and public facilities management is still in the low contraction range; Wholesale, postal, financial and other industries fell to the contraction range, and the total business volume changed from increase to decrease. However, the business activity index of telecommunications, radio and television and satellite transmission services, Internet software and information technology services continued to be in the expansion range, and the total business volume maintained growth, ensuring the stable and orderly operation of the economy and society
Strategy suggestion: at present, the impact of epidemic prevention and control is mainly regarded as a temporary impact factor, which means that the current economic operation state is only a temporary deviation, not a long-term derailment. Therefore, after the rapid release of market sentiment, it will turn to meet the expectation of policy force. For the trend of interest rate, it will also decline slightly, followed by the improvement of economic data.
Risk warning: the underlying policy exceeded expectations and the external environment improved
