Surveys of purchasing managers indicate that manufacturing industries in most of the worlds big economies are growing. In big emerging economies such as Brazil,China and India,the indices compiled by Markit,a provider of financial information,were well above 50 in January,indicating robust growth. In each of those countries manufacturing was still shrinking in January 2009. There has also been a pronounced turnaround in America,where the Institute for Supply Managements index for January was 58.4,in contrast to 35.5 in January 2009. Manufacturing is also expanding in Germany,France and Britain. But it is still shrinking in Greece and Spain,though much less markedly than a year earlier.
