NORTHERN Ireland's private sector firms have seen business activity - and their order books - grow for six months in a row, a respected business baromter claims.
But the Ulster Bank's PMI report warns that there is "no disguising the fact" that a slowdown appears to be in train for the region
And their statistics for October proved prophetic on a week in which tyre-maker Michelin, one of the north's biggest companies, confirmed that it plans to shut its Ballymena plant in 2018 with the loss of all 860 jobs.
The bank's monthly PMI is a survey of firms tracking indicators such as new orders, employment and exports.
It showed that activity has now risen in each of the past six months, although the latest expansion was weaker than the UK economy average.
The overall growth in output in October was led by a solid increase in the construction sector. New business also continued to increase, albeit at a slight pace that was the slowest in the current six-month sequence of growth.
But Ulster Bank's Northern Ireland chief economist Richard Ramsey sounded a note of caution around the figures, and warns of "a number of evident headwinds".
He said: "Business activity and new orders were encouragingly up in October, but the pace of expansion in both measures eased, with order books expanding at their weakest rate since April.
"Despite this slowdown though, Northern Ireland’s staffing levels were increased at the fastest rate in five months. This improvement was driven by the retail and wider services sector. Retailers are also hiring at their fastest rate since the survey began, despite the marked slowdown in retail sales and orders from their recent highs."
There were contrasting fortunes across the various sectors, the PMI revealed.
"Construction was the only sector to report a pick-up in growth in business activity, new orders and employment in October," Mr Ramsey said.
"This is likely to be due to improving workloads in Northern Ireland as well as robust rates of activity in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland.
"And retailers are still benefiting from the ‘noflation’ environment that has boosted households’ disposable incomes and encouraged consumer spending.
“But of more concern is manufacturing, which is exposed to the wider global economic slowdown and where output growth last month was flat – the weakest rate in seven months.
"New orders, an indicator of future business activity, were also flat while employment fell for the second consecutive month and the fastest rate of decline since June 2013."
The data-collection for the October PMI was collected ahead of last Tuesday's announcement at Michelin, but takes into account a significant number of high profile manufacturing redundancies already announced but to take place from the middle of next year.
Mr Ramsey added: “Overall, the Northern Ireland private sector is still experiencing growth, but there are a number of headwinds evident, and with an ongoing global slowdown impacting particularly on the manufacturing sector, these are likely to intensify into 2016 and indeed beyond.”
