Industrial production sustains high growth at 11.4% in Sept

NEW DELHI: The country’s industrial production has kept up its brisk momentum, rising by 11.4% in September 2006 over last year. The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) released on Friday, indicates that the the growth was powered by the double-digit growth of 12% and 11.3% in the manufacturing and electricity sectors respectively.

In the first half of this year, IIP has grown by 10.9% over the corresponding period of 2005-06. During the April-September months, manufacturing grew by 12.1%, electricity by 6.6% and mining by 3.1%. Mining has grown only by 3.9% during the period.

Icrier director Dr Rajiv Kumar said the interesting feature of the current growth spell was the narrowing of differences in rates between manufacturing and electricity. He said this could make the trend sustainable.

Among sectors, the growth rate has been the sharpest for intermediate goods at 14.7% for the month. It has logged 11.3% for Basic goods, but only 2.2% for capital goods. For the period of April-September 2006-07, the figures stood at 10.8%, 15.2% and 8.8% respectively.

The Consumer durables and Consumer non-durables have recorded growth rates of 12.6% and 12.5% respectively, with the overall growth in Consumer goods being 12.5%.

In terms of industries, the Beverages, Tobacco and Related Products sector as well as Basic Metal and Alloy Industries have shown the highest growth of 19.8%, followed by 19.6% in Wood, Wood Products, furniture and fixtures and 16.7% in Non-Metallic Mineral Products.

In 2005, the manufacturing sector recorded only a 8.9% growth rate for September 2005, electricity had a negative growth of 0.8% for September last year. The mining sector however only grew by 3.9% in September 2006, as compared to a negative growth of 1.9% in the same month last year.