World Wide, Purchasing Managers In Manufacturing Optimistic

World wide, purchasing managers in the manufacturing industry have become increasingly optimistic. The Markit Economic Survey expresses the responses of the purchasing managers in the form of diffusion indexes that are based on percent balances between those expecting improvement and those expecting deterioration. Values of the index above 50 represent expansion and those below, contraction.

Data for April, 2010 are currently being reported and most of the data show indexes that are now above the 50 level. The first to show expansion were the purchasing manages in the Far East. The first chart shows the diffusion indexes for the purchasing managers of Taiwan, Korea and India, three countries in the Far East for which April data are available. In these countries the indexes began to rise above 50 in early 2009. The second chart shows the indexes for Italy, France and Germany. Purchasing manager in these countries only became optimistic in late 2009. And in the troubled countries of the Euro Area that have reported--Greece, Ireland and Spain--the purchasing managers in Greece have yet to predict expansion while those in Ireland and Spain have only begun to predict expansion in March and April of this year, as can be seen in the third chart.