Industrial production growth stood at 0.5 per cent in November, government said on Friday, largely due to a contraction in manufacturing activity.
That marked slowest rate of growth in industrial production recorded since June 2017.
The industrial production or factory output,determined by Index of Industrial Production (IIP), also missed economists' expectation by a large margin.A poll of economists had forecast a growth of 4.1 per cent in industrial production for November, news agency Reuters reported.The growth in industrial production in October was revised upwards to8.4 per cent, from 8.1 per cent, data from Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed.In category of manufacturing, which has a weightage of77.6 per cent on index, production contracted 0.4 per cent in November.
Growth in manufacturing had stood at8.2 per cent in previous month, and10.4 per cent in November 2017, data showed.The decline was mainly on account of fall in manufacturing primarily in sectors such as metals, motor vehicles etc, said B Prasanna, head global markets group, ICICI Bank.Growth in mining and electricity stood at 2.7 per cent and 5.1 per cent in November respectively.
Mining has a weightage of 14.4 per cent on Index of Industrial Production.Industrial production grew 5 per cent in first eight months of current financial year (April-November) government noted in its statement.
Overall growth had stood at 3.2 per cent in corresponding period of previous fiscal year.GDP or gross domestic product growth fell to a worse-than-expected 7.1 per cent in July-September quarter.Most private economists have lowered country's growth forecast to around 7 per cent for financial year citing weakening consumption and slowdown in credit offtake.(With agency inputs)