Latest trends in the modern manufacturing industry. Countries that are the leaders in major sectors of manufacturing industries

The structure of manufacturing production for this group of countries shows clear trends: a strong raise in the value-added shares of industries producing information and communication technologies (ICT), machinery, transport equipment, precision instruments, chemical, plastics and rubber products, at the expense of all other industries, including traditional consumption goods and metal products. Most of the change occurred in the Seventies, when the combined share of ICT and machinery rose from 10 to 19 per cent. In the following decades their raise was more moderate, up to a share of 22 per cent in 2006.

A fairly new phenomenon is also the slight raise in the share of the food and beverage industry, concentrated in the two American groupings and in European countries.

The industrial structure of the African countries in our database is dominated by resource-based and traditional productions, such as food, apparel, leather and footwear, paper products, coke and refined petroleum products, metallic and non-metallic minerals.

The Asian economies in our group of countries are characterized by different development

levels and economic structures, making it difficult to identify significant common features.

Chinese industrial structure over this period is characterised by a strong decline of textile and other traditional industries and the ‘heavy’ industries producing metals and machinery, to the advantage of the electrical and telecommunication industry, transport equipment, food and beverages, apparel, leather and footwear. The Chinese industry has moved from the intermediate to the final stages of production processes.

Real value-added data for the Russian economy show the relative stability of its manufacturing structure after the transition to the market economy. The main industries of specialisation remain basic metals, non-metallic mineral products, energy sources, and to a lesser extent, the food sector. In the most recent period, there are some signs of diversification, with a growth of the real value-added shares of fabricated metal products, machinery and precision instruments, mostly at the expense of basic metals, chemicals and energy sources.

In fact, the period 2000-08 has witnessed a sharp fall of North America’s share of world production, and a cut of the Asian share, to the benefit of all the other regions, especially Europe. To a certain extent, these trends are affected by changes in relative prices and by fluctuations in nominal exchange rates that are stronger than substitution effects on tradable products. But the decomposition analysis carried out in this paper shows that a small contribution has come also from structural effects, resulting from the correlation between regional specialisation patterns and changes in the sector distribution of world production.

The intensity of structural change, after the relative slowdown in the 1980s, has risen again in the last two decades, especially in small developing economies, which are led towards further specialisation of their industrial structure.