The growth rate in the production of eight core sectors jumped to 5.4 per cent in November against 3.2 per cent in the corresponding month last year, according to the official data released on Friday. In October 2022, the core sectors’ output growth had stood at 0.9 per cent.
The production growth of eight infrastructure sectors — coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertiliser, steel, cement and electricity — stood at 8.0 per cent during April-October this fiscal, compared to 13.9 per cent a year ago.
“Final growth rate of the Index of Eight Core Industries for August 2022 is revised to 4.2 per cent from its provisional level 3.3 per cent. The cumulative growth rate of ICI during April-November 2022 was 8 per cent (provisional) as compared to the corresponding period of last year,” the commerce and industry ministry said in a statement.
Crude oil, natural gas and refinery products, however, recorded negative growth in November this year. The production of coal rose by 12.3 per cent, fertiliser by 6.4 per cent, steel by 10.8 per cent, cement by 28.6 per cent and electricity by 12.1 per cent in November 2022 compared to a year ago.
Aditi Nayar, chief economist at ICRA, said, “With fewer holidays relative to November 2021, the growth of the core sector output expectedly improved to 5.4 per cent in November 2022 from the marginal 0.9 per cent in October 2022, as the base effect reversed. The disaggregated trends were highly varied, with four sectors, namely coal, electricity, cement and steel posting a double-digit expansion and three sectors (crude oil, natural gas and refinery products) reporting an unpleasant contraction.”
She added that while the IIP will also display an improvement to a growth of 3-4 per cent in November 2022 from the contraction in the previous month, its performance may trail that of the core industries, given the drag imposed by weaker exports.
Core sectors industries, which have 40.27 per cent weight in the overall index of industrial production (IIP), would also have a bearing on industrial production data.
The IIP data for November is expected to be released by the government in the second week of January 2023.
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