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continue into the second quarter, and did not consider significant improvement in business
prospects was likely in
the near future.
5.5
Against the background of a continued decline in the retained imports of raw materials, of semi-manufactures, and of capital goods (all in real terms), the short-term outlook for the manufacturing sector appears to be unfavourable and
any recovery is likely to be slow. The order-book positions of a selection of large manufacturers included in the monthly
employment, payroll and orders-on-hand survey on
(3)
to confirm this view.
appeared
Property
5.6
In the first half of 1982, the additional supply of
property, in terms of the total usable floor area of all
buildings completed, was 1 502 000 square metres. This was still subtantial, although compared with the additional supply in the first half of 1981 (the highest on record), there was a drop of 13%. But there were wide variations between different
types of property.
/ Usable
(3) The monthly survey on employment, payroll and orders-on-hand includes 200 large manufacturing companies selected on the basis of employment in September 1979, in addition to a small number of construction and non-manufacturing companies. Each month a questionnaire is sent to each of these companies, requesting information on the number of persons engaged as at the end of the preceding month, the amount of payroll for the preceding month, and orders-on-hand in terms of months as at the first day of the current month. Its purpose is to provide short-term economic indicators at monthly intervals. As the survey is not based on a scientifically selected random sample, the results do not necessarily reflect the performance of the economy as a whole, but they do give some indication of the direction of change.
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