Growth in core industries slumps to 4-mth low of 0.1% in June

Showing no sign of recovery, growth rate of eight core infrastructure industries in India slumped to a four-month low of 0.1 per cent in June, mainly due to declining output of crude oil, coal, power and natural gas.

The eight core industries had expanded at a rate of 7.9 per cent in the same period last year.

The contraction in production of coal, crude oil, natural gas and electricity in the month was 3 per cent, 0.6 per cent, 16.7 per cent and 1.2 per cent, respectively, according to the government data.

The eight infrastructure industries have a weight of about 38 per cent in the overall industrial production.

Experts said figures clearly reflect slowdown in policy decisions and infrastructural bottlenecks.

"The demand in the economy has collapsed and what the RBI has done in its monetary policy will further push the growth of these sectors down. The overall economic growth would be below 5 per cent this fiscal," senior economist Rajiv Kumar said.

Petroleum refinery production showed an expansion of 2.3 per cent. Steel production grew by 3.4 per cent, while cement output was up by 2.3 per cent in the review period.

During April-June period, the growth in eight infrastructure industries slowed to 1.6 per cent from 6.9 per cent in the same period last year.

The growth was 3.2 per cent in 2012-13 as against 5 per cent in the previous financial year.

In February, the growth of eight core sectors was (-) 2.4 per cent.