Industrial Production Slides To 4.8 Per Cent
Continuing its declining trend, the growth rate of 24 select industries, including the infrastructure sector, fell to 4.8 per cent in the first nine months of the current year compared to 10.3 per cent during the same period last year.
According to the provisional production performance released by the industry ministry yesterday, the growth rate for the select industries, which account for 50.37 per cent of the total weight of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) was sluggish at 4.5 per cent for December. However, the figure was marginally higher than the 3.8 per cent recorded for November.
Infrastructure industries continued their dismal performance with a 3.3 per cent growth between April and December against 8.8 per cent for the same period last year.
Among infrastructure industries, the worst performance was by the crude petroleum sector which showed a negative growth of 8.8 per cent.
The performance of the saleable steel and electricity sectors was also poor with growth rates of 2.9 and 3.5 per cent respectively. However, the cement sector growth rate of 10.1 per cent was marginally better than the previous years figure.
Among the 24 industries, the best performance was by autorickshaws, with a growth rate of 35.6 per cent. But the car sector saw a decline in growth rates to 19.3 per cent in the first nine months of 1996-97 compared to a robust 37 per cent last year.
The commercial vehicle, jeep and motor cycle industries also witnessed a sharp decline in growth rates at 18.4, 17.6 and 23.3 per cent respectively as against 34.9, 46.3 and 28.5 per cent during the same period in the previous year.
The 18 major industries excluding infrastructure industries grew at 7.5 per cent during April-December 1996 compared to 13 per cent during the same period last year.
However, the 18 industries growth rate of 7.2 per cent for December was a welcome relief from a rather poor performance of 0.5 per cent in November. The 18 industries account for 21.60 per cent of the total IIP weightage.
Among the major industries, aluminium and sugar grew by 0.7 and 12.5 per cent, while nitrogenous fertilisers and phosphatic fertilisers registered negative growth of 3.1 and 0.2 per cent respectively during the first nine months of the fiscal year.