"The backlog of unfilled orders is sufficiently fat that we should have very solid production gains for the rest of the year."

Among heavy industries, machine-building and chemical industries (including rubber) registered annual average production gains of approximately 25 percent.

Industry analysts said the resulting production gains from efficiencies of scale improved performance despite slow growth in the food industry.

Due in large part to strong management, consistent production gains, falling costs and surging earnings, some analysts have had Magma at the top of their recommended lists for some time.

Manufacturers' expectations for production gains dropped slightly in mid-April, according to a new Dun & Bradstreet survey.

The production gain was higher than the four-tenths of a percent that had been expected, and capacity utilization was in line with expectations.

The trouble with firms is that 'team' production gains are bought at the cost of opportunities to 'shirk'.

So the production gains from the painstaking reconstruction of Iraq's oil infrastructure in the last year have already been absorbed by export markets.

Before the 1980s, however, production gains were largely matched by population growth, so that productive capacity was unable to outdistance essential consumption needs significantly, particularly in agriculture.

But Mr. Brusca warned that the production gain "is engineered totally by seasonal factors."