With crumbled growth in production of crude oil, natural gas and fertilizers, along with a sharp decline in steel, cement and electricity production, the growth of eight core sector industries dipped to 1.8% in July, posting the lowest growth since last nine months, while the key infrastructure industries registered 8.2% growth in July in previous year.
The natural gas and crude oil production contracted by 13.5% and 0.7%, respectively in July, albeit, fertilizer output also pummeled by 2.2% in the month under review. The steel and coal production slowed to 4.5% and 2.1%, respectively. While, cement, petroleum refinery and electricity output slowed to 3.8%, 3.6% and 2.2% against 13%, 3.7% and 13%, respectively.
The eight core industries have a combined weight of 37.90% in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP). The combined index was 147.3 in June 2012 with a growth rate of 1.8% compared to an 8.2% growth in July 2011.