Industrial production grows at 2.6% in January

India's industrial output growth accelerated to 2.6 per cent in January, mainly driven by growth in the capital goods sector, government data showed on Thursday.

Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting output growth to come in at 0.65 per cent compared with a 1.7 per cent growth in December.

India plans to release industrial output data based on a new methodology and use a different base year for calculating the index in the next few months, a senior government official at the statistics ministry told Reuters.

The industrial output data with 2004/05 as base year has become less relevant now after the government changed the methodology as well as the base year for GDP calculations last month.

The revised base year for GDP is 2011/12.