Core infrastructure industries grow by 3.7% in August

Growth of core infrastructure industries slowed to 3.7 per cent in August, as compared to 6.4 per cent in the same month last year, according to data released by the government today.

Expansion of the six core industries, crude oil, petroleum refinery products, coal, electricity, cement and finished steel, aggregated 4.1 per cent during the first five months of this fiscal as against 4.8 per cent in April-August 2009-10, the data of Commerce and Industry Ministry said.

These six segments account for 26.7 per cent of the country's total industrial output.
    
Growth in the petroleum refinery production contracted by 2.3 per cent against a positive growth of 3 per in August 2009.
    
As per the data, the crude oil output growth was 15 per cent while it had contracted by 2.5 per cent in August 2009.
    
Production of both coal and electricity slowed to mere one per cent each, as against robust growth of 13.3 per cent and 10.2 per cent in August 2009, respectively.
    
Similarly, cement production too slowed to 1.6 per cent from 17.5 per cent in the year ago period.
    
However, finished steel output grew by 7.7 per cent in August this year. It was 0.3 per cent in the same month last year.
    
Meanwhile, the growth of the core infrastructure sector has been revised upwards to 4 per cent for July from the earlier provisional estimate of 3.9 per cent.