NEW DELHI: India’s core sector growth halved to a five-month low of 3.6 per cent in March 2023 from 7.2 per cent in February, dragged by the poor performance of crude oil, power and cement production, government data released on Friday showed. Core sector output could have been hit by unseasonal rains, said Aditi Nayar, chief economist at ICRA.
“The halving in the YoY core sector... was fairly broad-based, with only coal and crude oil displaying a sequential improvement,” she added. The output of core sectors had increased by 4.8 per cent in March 2022. The previous low was 0.7 per cent in October 2022.
According to the data for March 2023, coal production recorded an increase of 12.2 per cent, fertilisers 9.7 per cent, steel 8.8 per cent, natural gas 2.8 per cent and refinery products 1.5 per cent.
The data showed that the growth rate of the eight infrastructure sectors — coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilisers, steel, cement and electricity — stood at 7.6 per cent in FY23, down from 10.4 per cent recorded in 2021-22.
Analysts say core sector will be under pressure this year due to weakening global and domestic demand.
The index of the eight core industries measures the combined and individual performance of the production of eight core industries and it makes up 40.27 per cent of the weight of items included in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP).