Infrastructure growth drops to 4.2% in Jan

Poor performance across core areas of the infrastructure sector has led to a steep fall in the growth of six core infrastructure industries to 4.2% in January from 8.3% in January 2007.

The growth rate of the core industries declined to 5.5% between April-January 2007-08 from 8.9% during the same period of the last fiscal.

According to official data released today, crude oil production registered a negative growth of 0.2% when compared with a growth of 4.7% last year. Growth in coal production declined to 4.8% from 9.9%.

Electricity sector witnessed a growth of 3.3% in January as against 8.3% in January 2007, and the cement sector registered a growth of 5.2% when compared with 7.2%.