"The results are rather positive. The year-on-year growth rate in October was as high as 16 percent. Excluding oil products, the growth rate was even higher," Žygimantas Mauricas, an economist at Nordea Bank Lietuva, told BNS.
"Our industry is not coming to a halt. It continues to be the main engine of the country's economic growth and it seems that it will remain so in the near future," he said.
Mauricas said that with the eurozone having plunged into recession, it is their competitiveness that saves Lithuanian industrial companies.
"The economies of our key export partners are posting rather good results. Also, Lithuania is in that good group of countries which are not in recession and will not go into recession at least in the near term," the economist said.
"Another thing is that our industrial companies are competitive abroad and are taking away market shares from their competitors even if the overall economy of a country of export of our industrial products is not growing," he said.
Mauricas said that the manufacturing sector is now being driven mainly by the food, furniture, and chemical industries.
The analyst said that Nordea sticks to its 7-percent export growth forecast for 2013.
Lithuania's industrial production and sales rose by 4 percent in the ten months through October compared with a year ago, to 58.428 billion litas (EUR 16.94b), Statistics Lithuania said on Wednesday.
