Industry grows by 1.4 pc in April

In what could be seen as early sign of recovery, industrial growth turned positive for April at 1.4 per cent, after remaining negative for months even as certain sectors like consumer non-durables and capital goods continued to contract. However, factory output is down in the first month of this fiscal compared with 6.2 per cent in April, 2008.

Given the fact that industrial growth, as measured by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), turned negative provisionally almost for each month after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September last year, even this 1.4 per cent rise in industrial production could be seen as early signs of recovery.

The biggest surprise was electricity generation which grew by 7.1 per cent in April against 1.4 per cent a year ago.

Manufacturing, which has a weight of around 80 per cent in IIP, grew by modest 0.7 per cent from 6.7 per cent. Mining grew by 3.8 per cent in the month compared with 6.1 per cent in April, 2008.

Consumer non-durable output contracted by 10.4 per cent in the period against 10 per cent growth in the same month a year ago. Capital goods production declined by 1.3 per cent against growth of 12.4 per cent a year ago. As many as 11 out of 17 industry groups showed a positive growth.