IIP numbers better than anticipated: Gaurav Kapoor, RBS

NEW DELHI: The Index of Industrial Production ( IIP) for the month of January was very positive said Gaurav Kapoor, Senior Economist, RBS. "It is definitely a better number. It is a good sign," Gaurav said.

"I do believe that we have seen some degree of bottoming out in the economy. The question from hereon which we should be asking is how fast the recovery would be, which, in my case, would be a fairly slow recovery, but by and large numbers are definitely better than what I anticipated, and what the general consensus expectations were," he told ET Now.

For the April-January period of 2012-13 fiscal, the industrial production growth is at 1 per cent, down from 3.4 per cent in the same period of 2011-12, according to official data released.

Meanwhile, the decline in industrial output for December 2012 has been revised slightly upward to 0.5 per cent from a contraction of 0.6 per cent as per provisional estimates released last month.

The manufacturing sector, which constitutes over 75 per cent of the index, grew by 2.7 per cent in January, as against 1.1 per cent in the same month of 2012.

The growth in the output of the key sector remained low at 0.9 per cent in April-January this fiscal, as against 3.7 per cent growth in the same period in 2011-12.

Power generation has increased by 6.4 per cent in January compared to 3.2 per cent growth in January, 2012.

During the April-January period, electricity generation has gone up by 4.7 per cent, compared to a growth of 8.8 per cent in the same period in the last fiscal.