According to a recent Scottish industrial trend survey, there have been improvements in the trends of major manufacturing firm as industrial firms report improved domestic and export orders along with higher output.

From the survey which involved 49 Scottish firms, it was discovered that there were more of domestic orders than that of exports, which is happening for the first time in 12 months.

This is said to be their best performance in 5-years since April 2006, as the volume of total new order went from plus-8 in January last year to minus-8 in January this year and plus-34 in April.

However, the figures show the difference between those experiencing increase and decrease in the volume of total new orders.

According to the heavy responses to the survey, currently firms working under capacity have dropped from 69 in January last year, to 64 in April this year.

Moreover, CBI has stated that the data for the past 3 months has revealed that the recovery of the manufacturing firms is going well, as out of 451 firms response to the survey, 36% said the output had increased while 15% said it had decreased.

Continuous growing Inflationary pressures have been discovered by CBI, as a result of companies’ intention to pass increasing raw material cost. Though the Office for National Statistics has recorded a 0.5% fall in output, economists expect an increase of about 0.5% for the first quarter of 2011.