New Delhi, April 3: The growth rate of six of the country’s key infrastructure industries’ accelerated to 8.7 per cent in February against 7.6 per cent in the same month a year ago, reviving hopes that industrial production would speed up and help arrest the current economic slowdown. However, the overall growth rate of these sectors for the 11 months from April to February 2007-08 remained lower at 5.6 per cent than 8.7 per cent for the corresponding period of fiscal 2006-07, due to below 5 per cent growth in the preceding four months. The infrastructure sector had grown by a poor 4.2 per cent in January 2008.

February’s above 1 percentage point year-on-year rise in core sector growth was largely on account of a massive increase in expansion of the electricity sector, which registered a growth of 9.6 per cent compared with 3.3 per cent in the same month last year. The six core sectors — electricity, crude oil, petroleum refinery products, coal, cement and finished steel — are major components of the index of industrial production (IIP) and together carry a combined weight of 26.68 per cent in the IIP. Of the six, the electricity sector carries the highest weight of 10.17 per cent in the IIP.

The three sectors that showed a decline in growth in the same period are crude oil (down to 2.3 per cent in February 2008 from 4.9 per cent in February 2007), petroleum products (down to 5.8 per cent in February 2008 compared with 11.3 per cent in the corresponding month of the previous year) and finished steel (down to 8.2 per cent in February 2008 from 13.6 per cent in February 2007). However, these three sectors together have a combined weight of 11.3 per cent.

Apart from the electricity sector, which recorded an increase in growth, the coal industry showed double-digit growth of 11.7 per cent in February 2008 compared to last year’s 6.5 per cent while the cement sector exhibited 12.4 per cent growth in February compared with last year’s 5.8 per cent. These two sectors have a combined weight of around 5.2 per cent.