On April 16, 2020, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) launched the 49th round of quarterly order books, inventories and capacity utilization survey (OBICUS) of the manufacturing sector which will provide important figures and input for monetary policy formulation. The reference period for this survey is January-March 2020 (Q4: 2019-20).
- The information to be collected in this 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.
48th round- Q3: 2019-20; CU declined to 68.6%
Recently on April 3, 2020, RBI released the results of the 48th round of the OBICUS for the quarter October-December 2019 (Q3: 2019-20) under which 704 manufacturing companies were covered. It showed a decline in capacity utilisation (CU) to 68.6% in the third quarter of 2019-20 from 69.1% in Q2. Also orders received in Q3: 2019-20 were lower compared with the previous quarter.
What is OBICUS?
Since 2008, RBI’s OBICUS is taken quarterly (4 times a year) and companies of manufacturing sector are asked to volunteer information on their inventory level. It provides a deep scenario regarding demands of the Indian manufacturing sector.
About Reserve Bank of India (RBI):
Headquarters– Mumbai, Maharashtra
Formation– 1 April 1935
Governor– Shaktikanta Das
Deputy Governors– 4 (Bibhu Prasad Kanungo, Mahesh Kumar Jain, Michael Debabrata Patra, one is yet to be appointed).
