Industrial production rose by 10.9 per cent in the year to the end of January 2002, provisional figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed yesterday. This compares to a year-on-year increase for December 2001, of 5.6 per cent.

On a seasonally-adjusted basis, the data also show that production climbed by 6 per cent in the three months to the end of January. Unadjusted figures for the same period indicated that consumer goods was the fastest growing group at 10.8 per cent. There was an 8.4 per cent rise in intermediate products while capital goods decreased by 14.9 per cent.

Within these categories, the sharpest decrease in production over the three months between November and the end of January last year was in "radio, television and communication equipment and apparatus", where output fell by 42.6 per cent.

Mr Austin Hughes, chief economist with Irish Intercontinental Bank, said the figures provided positive news about the wider economy. "The most important thing is that the trend is still upward," he said. "There's clear resilience in the economy."

Meanwhile, other CSO figures released yesterday showed that registrations of new private cars fell by 28.6 per cent last year, while registrations of second-hand cars dropped by 36.5 per cent.

In total, 160,908 new private cars and 15,237 second-hand private cars were registered in 2001. Ford was the most popular brand for new cars (17,936 cars), closely followed by Volkswagen (16,967) and Toyota (16,531).

The number of new goods vehicles licensed in 2001 was 30,622, a decrease of 8.9 per cent on the previous year.