Nov industrial growth at 8.4%, retail inflation surges to 5.2% in Dec

IIP growth had stood at 5.7% in November 2016; CPI-based inflation in December 2017 rose to a 17-month highly, mainly on rising food prices, showed official data released on Friday

Less than a month before Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would present Budget 2018, the Narendra Modi-led government’s final full Budget in the present term, there was a mixed bag of good and bad news for the central government in the form of two sets of economic indicators released on Friday by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (Mospi).
 
Industrial activity in the country, as measured by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), brought some cheer, rising to a 25-month high of 8.4 per cent in November from 2.2 per cent the previous month. However, the pain for the