Showing signs of further pick-up in the economy, annual growth of key
infrastructure industries including, coal and cement, have more than doubled to seven-month high of 5.1 per cent in September.
The eight core industries - coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilizers,
steel, cement and electricity - have shown marked improvement, both year-on-year as well on sequential basis.
These industries had expanded by mere 2.3 in August 2012 and 2.5 per cent in September last year.
The coal, refinery products and cement, have shown impressive double-digit growth expanding by 21.4 per cent, 11.4 per cent and 13.4 per cent, respectively, in September over the same month last year, according to the official data released on Wednesday.
The healthy infrastructure growth comes on the back of turnaround of overall industrial output which expanded by 2.7 per cent in August, reversing the trend of contraction witnessed during the previous two months.
However, crude oil and natural gas continued to remain in problem showing negative growth of 1.7 per cent and 14.8 per cent, respectively.
With better sequential performance of these key eight segments, the overall industrial production measured on IIP for September is likely to be better, experts said.
These eight industries account for about 40 per cent in the IIP. The IIP data for September will be released in the third week next month.
Expansion in steel production slowed to 2 per cent and growth in cement output was 13.4 per cent during the month under review.
There was healthy improvement in the fertilizer production also. Its production grew by 5.7 per cent in September as against a decline of 2.1 per cent.
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