story from Talk Business & Politics, a content partner with The City Wire
April U.S. manufacturing technology orders totaled $384.81 million, according to The Association For Manufacturing Technology (AMT). The numbers were down 8.1% from March and 1% from the previous April report.
Year-to-date manufacturing technology orders in 2015 totaled $1.459 billion, down 8.5% when compared with 2014.
These numbers and all data in this report are based on the totals of actual data reported by companies participating in the U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders (USMTO) program. The USMTO summary includes metal cutting and forming machine orders by region in a continually revised 13-month table format that tracks aggregate trends in the machine tool market.
“Right now capital equipment makers are feeling the effects of a stronger dollar, which creates a drag on exports, and lower oil and natural gas prices, which means less spending on equipment investments from the energy industry,” said AMT President Douglas Woods.
Woods said the sour news should be short-lived. He suggested that savings are stockpiling for manufacturers and that upcoming activity should lead to growth.
“What is a negative now should help us later – imported components for capital equipment are costing less, and businesses will accumulate savings from lower fuel prices in the coming months, meaning more money for capital investment. We believe investment in manufacturing will remain steady, and overall performance for the year will be as strong as we saw in 2013 and 2014,” Woods said.
The USMTO report, compiled by the trade association representing the production and distribution of manufacturing technology, provides regional and national U.S. orders data of domestic and imported machine tools and related equipment.
REGIONAL LOOK
U.S. manufacturing technology orders are also reported on a regional basis for six geographic breakdowns of the United States. The South Central region includes Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
Northeast Region
Northeast Region manufacturing technology orders in April stood at $65.95 million, 11.5% less than the $74.55 million total for March but 6.9% more than the $61.71 million for April 2014.
Southeast Region
Year-to-date manufacturing technology orders for the Southeast Region totaled $127.35 million, down 14.3% from the 2014 total at the same time.
North Central-East Region
With an April total of $127.57 million, North Central-East Region manufacturing technology orders were up 4.1% from the $122.53 million tally for March and up 29.9% when compared with April a year ago. Year-to-date orders totaled $417.42 million, down 10.5% from the comparable figure for 2014.
North Central-West Region
Manufacturing technology orders in the North Central-West Region in April totaled $69.14 million, 4.8% more than in April 2014.
South Central Region
South Central Region year-to-date manufacturing technology orders for 2015 totaled $124.44 million, down 47.9% from the comparable figure for 2014.