Pulled down by the sluggish performance of petroleum and electricity sector, growth of India's six core industries slowed down to 3.6 per cent in the first month of the current fiscal as against 5.9 per cent a year ago.
The six core infrastructure industries - crude oil, petroleum refinery products, coal, electricity, cement and finished carbon steel - had registered a 9.6 per cent growth in the preceding month of March.
Of the six industries, that have a combined weight of 26.7 per cent in the overall Index of Industrial Production, refinery products growth slowed down considerably to 4.3 per cent in April from 15.1 per cent in the same month last year.
Similarly, electricity generation growth was down to 1.4 per cent from a robust 8.7 per cent in April 2007.
Crude oil growth came down to 0.9 per cent from 1.4 per cent.
The remaining three sectors--coal, cement and finished carbon steel--registered good growth rates. Coal output grew by 10.3 per cent from a mere 0.6 per cent, while cement production rose by 6.9 per cent from 5.8 per cent and finished carbon steel to four per cent from 2.7 per cent.
Industrial growth, contributed to the extent of more than one-fourth by these six industries, had recovered to 7.1 per cent in April from a mere 3.9 per cent in the preceding month.
However, the growth was quite down from 11.3 per cent in April 2007.
For the April-March period of 2007-08, growth of six infrastructure industries was down to 5.6 per cent as compared to 9.2 per cent in the corresponding period a year ago.
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