The volume was up by 1.8% adjusted to workdays, chiefly due to the leap-year effect, KSH said.
Output was up 3% in the first two months of the year as compared to the same period last year.
The volume of industrial production in February – according to seasonally and working-day adjusted indices – was below the level of the previous month by 0.8%, KSH added.
KSH official Miklós Schindele said that output was unchanged in the vehicle manufacturing and food industry segments in February, Hungarian news agency MTI reported. Output in the energy sector was slightly down due to warm weather, while in other smaller segments of the industrial sector, output growth was relatively strong, he added.
Takarékbank analyst Gergely Suppan told the news agency that monthly data clearly show that a drop in industrial output was not temporary, but output growth should pick up in the coming months based on order stocks and confidence indicators. For the year, industrial output could expand by 5% following a 7.5% growth in 2015.
Erste Bank analysts Vivien Barczel told MTI that workday-adjusted data points to a slowdown in the industrial sector. In 2016 output could grow by 3-4% mainly driven by increased production in the automotive sector.
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