India's industrial growth shrinks for second straight month in August, down 0.7%

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: On the back of poor production in mining and manufacturing sectors, India's industrial output contracted for the second consecutive month in August, shrinking by 0.7 percent.

Government data showed the shrink was led by declines in mining and manufacturing productions which plunged by 5.6 percent and 0.3 percent respectively.

In July, the industrial production had grown by a mere (-)2.4 percent.

Factory output measured in terms of Index of Industrial Production (IIP) was 603 percent in August last year, as per data released by Central Statistics Office (CSO) today.

The cumulative growth for the period April-August 2016 over the corresponding period of the previous year stands at (-) 0.3 percent, as per the data.

In a sign of anaemic investment, capital goods production shrank 22.2 percent. Consumer goods grew just 1.1 percent from a year ago, pointing to a tepid consumer demand.

Industrial output figures have paled in significance since last year, when New Delhi revamped the method it uses to calculate gross domestic product.

The new method takes into account gross value addition in goods and services, a departure from the old practice that factored in volume-based indicators such as industrial output.

That helps to explain why India remains the fastest growing major economy despite sluggish measures of industrial production.

The federal statistics office plans to revise and rebase the industrial production index in the next six months to better capture the changes taking place in the economy.

 

With Agency Inputs