Low base, healthy demand lift India's February core sector growth
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Low base, along with healthy demand as well as easing Covid restrictions, buoyed India's eight core industries' production in February 2022 on a sequential and year-on-year basis, official data showed on Thursday.
The growth rate of the eight core industries in February 2022 rose to a four-month high of 5.8 per cent from 4 per cent reported in January 2022.
The Index of Eight Core Industries' (ICI) index reading rose on a year-on-year basis, against (-) 3.3 per cent during February 2021.
The ICI index has 40.27 per cent of the weight of items included in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), and comprises coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilisers, steel, cement, and electricity.
"Final growth rate of Index of Eight Core Industries for November 2021 has been revised to 3.2 per cent from its provisional level 3.1 per cent," a Ministry of Commerce and Industry statement said.
"The cumulative growth rate of ICI during April-February 2021-22 was 11 per cent (P) as compared to the corresponding period of last FY."
On a sector-specific basis, the output of coal, which has a weightage of 10.33 per cent in the index, showed a growth of 6.6 per cent in February 2022 over the same month of the previous year.
Similarly, the output of refinery products, which has the highest weightage of 28.04 per cent, rose by 8.8 per cent, compared to the corresponding month of the last fiscal.
Electricity generation, which has the second highest weightage of 19.85 per cent, rose by 4 per cent, whereas steel production was down by 5.7 per cent last month.
However, the extraction of crude oil, which has a weightage of 8.98 per cent, declined by 2.2 per cent during the month under consideration, even though the sub-index for natural gas output, with a weightage of 6.88 per cent, rose by 12.5 per cent.
Cement production, which has a weightage of 5.37 per cent, rose by 5 per cent in the month under review. Fertiliser manufacturing, which has the least weightage -- only 2.63 per cent -- declined by 1.4 per cent.
