Eight core sector industries grow by 5.2% in June

With electricity and steel showing healthy production growth, the eight core infrastructure industries expanded by 5.2% in June as against 4.4% in the same period last year.

The industries -- crude oil, petroleum refinery products, natural gas, fertilisers, coal, electricity, cement and finished steel -- have a weight of 37.90% in the overall index of industrial production.

With addition of two sectors -- fertilisers and natural gas -- the number of key infrastructure sectors, picked up separately for measuring performance has now gone to eight.

Electricity and steel grew by 8.2% and 12.5% in June from 3.8% and 4.3% in the same month in 2010, according to the provisional data released today.

Crude oil production grew by 7.7% in the month under review from 6.8% in the comparable period of last year. Petroleum refinery products too grew by 4.7% from 2.9%.

However, natural gas, cement, coal and fertiliser showed a negative growth of 11.7%, 0.8%, 3.3% and 2.4%, respectively.

During April-June 2011-12, the growth of core industries slowed down to 5.0% from 6.8% in the same quarter previous year.

The growth of eight core infrastructure industries slowed down to 5.3% in May against 7.4% a year ago.