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Eight Core Industries Grow By Healthy 6.8% in Feb

  • Showing signs of recovery, the eight core infrastructure industries grew by 6.8 percent in February on account of healthy coal and power output, up from a dismal performance of 0.5 percent a month ago.The core infra grew by 6.4 percent in February last year. The eight industries-- crude oil, petroleum refinery products, natural gas, fertilisers, coal, electricity, cement and finished steel-- have a weight of 37.90 percent in the overall Index of Industrial Production. Electricity, coal and cement output grew by 8 percent, 17.8 percent and 10.8 percent, respectively, in February according to the provisional data released Thursday.

  • Economists said if this growth rate is maintained for a few more months, it would improve the overall industry output.The eight core sectors had grown by a mere 0.5 percent in January, 2012."We have to see if these numbers hold up in March and April. Then it would be a turnaround in core industries growth," Director and Senior Economist of Deloitte Haskins and Sells Anis Chakravarty said.

  • "The growth is mainly driven by coal which performed badly last year," CRISIL Economist D K Joshi said.In February 2011, electricity and cement production had grown by 7.2 percent and 6.5 percent respectively, while coal output contracted by (-) 5.8 percent.Crude oil production grew by a mere 0.4 percent in the month under review against 12.2 percent in the comparable period of last year. Petroleum refinery products output grew by 6.2 percent against a growth of 3.2 percent in the same month last year.

  • However, natural gas output contracted by (-) 7.6 percent. Fertiliser and steel production rose by 4.1 percent and 4.3 percent in February as against 4.8 percent and 18.5 percent respectively in the same period last year.During April-February 2011-12, the growth of core industries slowed down to 4.4 percent from 5.8 percent in the same quarter last year.During the 11-months of the fiscal, while natural gas production contracted by (-) 8.8 percent, coal and crude oil output grew by 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent respectively.

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