With a weight of 37.90 per cent in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), the eight core infrastructure industries posted a lower of growth of 3.5 per cent in August this year as compared to 4.4 per cent achieved in the same month of 2010.
Accordingly, the cumulative growth rate of the eight industries — crude oil, petroleum refinery products, natural gas, fertilizers, coal, electricity, cement and finished steel — during the April-August period of 2011-12 works out to 5.3 per cent, down from the 6.1 per cent expansion notched up during the five-month period of the previous fiscal year.
As per the provisional data released here, the growth in output of electricity, steel and cement output went up by 8.9 per cent, 7.7 per cent and 7.2 per cent, respectively in August this year as compared to expansions of 1.6 per cent, 10.8 per cent and 1.6 per cent in the same month last year.
Production of crude oil, however, grew by a mere 1.6 per cent during the month this year as against a robust growth of 15.2 per cent posted in August 2010. On the contrary, the growth in output of petroleum refinery products went up by 3.9 per cent as compared to a contraction of 2.3 per cent during the same month last year.
Similarly, fertilizer output went up by 4.3 per cent in the month under review as compared to a negative growth of 5.7 per cent in the same month last year.
The two laggards among the eight core sector industries during the month were natural gas and coal which witnessed negative growth rates of (-) 5.3 per cent and (-) 15.3 per cent, respectively, In August 2010, while coal output had shown a paltry increase of 0.6 per cent, natural gas had witnessed a hefty output growth of 11.9 per cent.
