The growth rate of eight industries - crude oil, petroleum refinery products, natural gas, fertilisers, coal, electricity, cement and finished steel - have a weightage of 37.9 per cent in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), in March moderated to 2 per cent from 6.5 per cent in the same month last year.
The cumulative growth rate of infrastructure industries during fiscal 2010-11 slowed down to 4.3 per cent, down from 6.6 per cent in 2010-11.
The dismal performance of core industries, according to experts, points to economic slowdown and will have implications for industrial production data to be released on May 12.
"Of-course, it will affect. Not only now, it will also affect IIP in the next year due to lagged effect. It's an ongoing problem. What we need is policy attention," Ficci Secretary General Rajiv Kumar said.
The data, he added, "reaffirms the worst fears and the economy is in a midst of a real slowdown. The government needs to take several steps."
As per the data released by the government natural gas and crude oil contracted by 10.1 per cent and 2.9 per cent respectively.
