Finland Times

The increase was merely due to a large business transaction in the electronics industry producing goodwill value growth that raised the amount of intangible investments to EUR 4.9 billion.

At the same time, depreciations of industrial enterprises have in recent years clearly exceeded the amount of tangible investments in fixed assets.

This type of development will inevitably lead to petering out of the production capacity of manufacturing in Finland as per the data derived from structural business and financial statement statistics for 2014.

The turnover of manufacturing decreased to EUR 130.3 billion in 2014 from EUR 135.1 billion in the previous year, showing a fall by 3.6 per cent.

One-half of the fall in turnover came from the metal industry. Most of the decrease in turnover derived from other than the fall in domestic industrial output.

According to the statistics on industrial output 2014, which describe the same period, the value of sold output was EUR 80 billion, which decreased by 1.2 per cent from the year before.

Weak improvement could be seen in the profitability of manufacturing measured by the operating margin.

The result before financial items and taxes grew by EUR 380 million rising the operating margin by half a percentage point.

The sales gains received due to large corporate acquisitions in the electronic industry increased the result for the financial period.

Similarly, the tax refunds amounting to nearly EUR one billion received in the industry decreased the taxes paid by manufacturing to EUR 40 million.

The combined result for the financial period of manufacturing enterprises was EUR 12.4 billion in 2014. The result of the year before was EUR 2.0 billion, according to the statistics based on the Tax Administration's business taxation data, which have been supplemented with Statistics Finland's own inquiry.

The number of personnel employed by enterprises went down in nearly all industries. The fall was considerable particularly in the industries of manufacturing, trade and logistics.  

The number of personnel grew only in the industries of health care, arts and entertainment, and food service and accommodation activities.

The total number of enterprises rose due to the growing number of primary production enterprises. In other industries the number of enterprises remained more or less on level with the previous year.  

The number of enterprises with the biggest turnover of over EUR 200 million remained unchanged in 2014 from 2013.