All mayor industrial divisions saw a slowdown in the month-on-month comparison, but only mining and quarrying recorded a fall year-on-year (-27.7%).

Across-the-board growth was also recorded in the January-August period compared to the same period a year ago.

The biggest surge was in electricity, gas and steam supplies industries at 8.2%, which contributed to the overall growth of 3.7% from the first eight months of last year.

Industrial revenue in August was meanwhile up 5.3% year-on-year but down 1.3% on July. The biggest jump year-on-year was in manufacturing at 4.7%.

The figure was also up 3.9% in January-August from the same period a year ago, rising by 6.5% in mining and by 4.3% in manufacturing.

Inventories were down 1.5% in August from July but remained level with August 2013, a report from the Statistics Office shows.