Ireland’s service sector continued to expand in March, albeit at the slowest pace in one year, figures from Markit Economics showed Tuesday.
The Investec services purchasing managers’ index fell to 60.9 in March from 61.4 in the previous month. This showed the weakest expansion in one year. However, the reading still signalled a sharp monthly expansion, extending the current sequence of growth to 32 months.
New business increased at a slower pace in March. At the same time, new orders rose at a substantial pace.
New business from abroad also gained markedly in March. A number of respondents indicated that the UK had been a key source of new work.
Companies raised their staffing level during March, both in response to higher new orders and in anticipation of further growth of workloads in coming months. Backlogs of work rose for the twenty-second successive month.
On the price front, input prices increased sharply in March, due to the recent weakness of the euro, particularly in relation to sterling. The rate of inflation accelerated to the fastest since September 2008.
Output prices also rose notably in March, with charges increasing at the steepest pace since March 2007.
“All in all, it would appear from recent Investec Irish Manufacturing and Services PMI releases that the key segments of the economy captured by those surveys performed robustly in Q1, which gives us confidence that the impressive growth seen in 2014 (GDP +4.8%) is likely to have continued into the New Year,” Philip O’Sullivan, a chief economist at Investec Ireland said.
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