Thanks to swift and generous efforts made by the Office for National Statistics I can give you the latest official update of activity in the rental and leasing world. The latest data – a non-published sub-set of the Index of Services released this morning – shows a continued rise in the amount of work done by plant hire firms in the final quarter. I have also updated the construction output figures to the latest index provided in the GDP series….
Construction plant hire prices remained subdued in the second quarter of this year showing no sign of growth after the mini spike in prices recorded late last year, according to the latest services producer prices index. This puts prices down on the same time a year ago by about 0.6% in cash terms and leaves prices more than 8% lower than at the peak in 2006. With cost increases squeezing most if not all businesses, this suggests margins will remain…
The mini surge in plant hire activity in February and March came to an end with activity dropping by 2.8% in April, according to the latest Index of Services figures. Okay, there was an extra Bank holiday in April with the Royal Wedding that will have dampened activity. But conversely the weather was rather better than normal and may well have helped support activity in construction. Too much should not be drawn from one month’s figures, but the dip in activity in…
The economy is flatlining – that is the assessment we are encouraged to draw from the first stab at national output by the statisticians at ONS. The 0.5% growth in the first quarter of this year to counter the 0.5% snow induced fall in 2010 Q4 was very much in line with the consensus view among economists. So it will not come as a surprise. But the stagnation over the past six months implied by the figures is a blow…
The plant hire sector is showing signs of weakening along with the slowdown in growth in construction. The latest Index of Services figures show the lowest level of output from firms renting machinery and equipment since May. The graph above tracks this output on a quarterly basis against construction output. And not surprisingly the correlation is about as close to bang on as one might expect. As an aside, this will provide some comfort for the statisticians at ONS who produce the…