Skip to main content

Infrastructure sector growth dips to 3.6% in April

(The Hindu Business Line 19th June 2008)
The growth rate of the six core infrastructure industries witnessed a major slide in April this year compared to the same month last year.
The combined growth registered by the six core sector industries dipped to 3.6 per cent in April as against 5.9 per cent in April 2007.Steel, cement improve
A more than 10 per cent growth in coal production along with improved performance by the steel and cement sector prevented the infrastructure index from dipping further under pressure from poor growth in electricity generation, crude oil production and petroleum refinery output.
Coal production went up by 10.3 per cent in April (0.6 per cent in the same month last year), cement output gained by 6.9 per cent (5.8 per cent) while crude steel production improved by four per cent (2.7 per cent).Downtrend
The three industries that created the downward pressure on the index are crude oil (from 1.4 per cent in April 2007 went down to 0.9 per cent in April 2008), refinery output (from 15.1 per cent to 4.3 per cent) and electricity generation (from 8.7 per cent to 1.4 per cent).
In absolute terms, crude oil production in April 2008 was 2.81 million tonnes (2.79 mt in April 2007), petroleum refinery output was 12.13 mt (11.64 mt) and electricity generation was 58,815 GwH (58,030 GwH). Coal production went up to 34.98 mt (31.72 mt), cement output increased to 15.52 mt (14.52 mt) while steel production was 4.13 mt (3.97 mt).Industrial production
For fiscal 2007-08, the growth in industrial production stood at 5.6 per cent as against 9.2 per cent in fiscal 2006-07.
Only the growth in coal production during 2007-08 was higher compared to the corresponding figure last fiscal. All the five other sectors witnessed a dip. Growth in crude oil production dipped from 5.6 per cent in 2006-07 to 0.4 per cent in 2007-08, petroleum refinery products (from 12.9 per cent to 6.5 per cent), electricity (from 7.3 per cent to 6.3 per cent), cement from (9.1 per cent to 8.1 per cent) and finished steel (from 13.1 per cent to 5.1 per cent). Only production in the coal sector improved marginally during 2007-08 to touch six per cent as against 5.9 per cent in 2006-07.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Stock Market says Merry Christmas to Investors

Sensex today closed 691.55 point up at 19854.12 , Nifty was up 218 points at 5985.10. It is the 6th bigeest gain in oneday. Today's main contributors are IT stocks. Wipro was up at 535.30 (+8.86%), Infosys up at 1810.90(+6.63%) and Satyam closed at 454.55 up by 6.28%. The buying activity was wide-base and lifted almost all the sectoral indices. Sector wise performance was as follows - BSE IT 4581.61 (+260.98) BSE Healthcare 4294.83(+52.30) BSE FMCG2218.74(+20.29) BANKEX 11101.74 (+363.15) BSE Auto5586.83(+45.57) BSE TECk3961.96 (+185.00) BSE PSU 9830.01 (+317.11) Today BSE Midcap closed at 9211.71 up by 186.17 and BSE Smallcap index closed at 11980.57 up by 167.25 points.

News - Economy

Interest rates unlikely to go down (The Economic Times 4th Jan 2008)Interest rates are unlikely to fall in near future as it was expected with the State Bank of India raising the fixed deposit rate of various maturities up to 1.5 percentage points. Other banks are also planning to raise deposit rates. After SBI increasing deposit rates, other banks have no choice but to raise the rates to mobilize resources in the domestic market, chairman of a public sector bank said. As the cost of funds for banks will increase, they will resort to raising the lending rates. A senior banker said banks would announce the increased rates in near future. More Gold zooms past Rs 11,000 per 10 gm (The Hindu Businessline 4th Jan 2008)Gold prices made history as they soared to a record $ 865.35 an ounce in the London A.M fixing on Thursday, tracking which the domestic gold surged to Rs. 11,000 per 10 gm. On Wednesday, gold was fixed at $ 840.75/oz in London while in the Indian market it quoted at Rs 10,70

IIP records negative growth of 0.4% in Oct

T he country's industrial output shrunk for the first time in many years to a record a negative growth of 0.4 per cent in October, stifled by manufacturing sector -- for rescuing which the government announced a stimulus package earlier this mo nth. Output had grown by 5.45 per cent in September, and 12.2 per cent in October, 2007. The Index for Industrial Production numbers for the seven-month period ended October was 4.1 per cent against 9.9 per cent a year ago. Manufacturing sector, which accounts for 80 per cent of the index, declined to 1.2 per cent from 13.8 per cent in the year-ago period. Only earlier this month, the government sought to rescue manufacturers by announcing an across-the-board (barring petroleum goods) four per cent cut in excise duty. Electricity sector grew by 4.4 per cent during the month, bettering 4.2 per cent output of the year-ago period, while mining sector grew by a slower 2.8 per cent against 5.1 per cent in the previous year's comparable period