India's industrial output grew by 5.6 percent in February, data released on April 12 by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation showed.
Industrial growth, as per the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), in January has been revised up to 5.5 percent from 5.2 percent.
At 5.6 percent, the February IIP growth print is largely in line with consensus expectations of 5.8 percent.
For the first 11 months of 2022-23, IIP growth was 5.5 percent as against 12.5 percent in the corresponding period of 2021-22.
The slight increase in industrial growth in February was aided by an improvement in the performance of the manufacturing sector, whose output rose by 5.3 percent as against 4 percent in January. Given that the manufacturing sector makes up nearly 78 percent of the IIP, this modest increase outweighed the impact of a fall in the growth rates seen in electricity and mining.
In February, electricity production rose by 8.2 percent, down from 12.7 percent in January, while mining sector output was up 4.6 percent, down from the 8.8 percent increase it had posted the previous month.
Going by the use-based classification of goods, the output of consumer non-durables was particularly noteworthy as it rose by 12.1 percent in February as against an increase of 6.3 percent in January.
"While the disaggregated trend was quite uneven, the improved performance of consumer goods is encouraging," noted Aditi Nayar, chief economist at ICRA.
Although the output of consumer durables contracted for the third month in a row, it did so by 4 percent as against 8.2 percent in January.
However, production of intermediate goods slipped into the red as it shrunk by 0.3 percent following a 0.5 percent increase in January.
Output growth of the three other goods categories moderated by varying degrees: 10.7 percent to 10.5 percent for capital goods, 9.8 percent to 7.9 percent for infrastructure goods, and 9.6 percent to 6.8 percent for primary goods.
"Dampened by a high base and heavy rainfall, the year-on-year performance of most of the available high frequency indicators have weakened in March relative to February. Based on these trends, ICRA expects the year-on-year growth in the IIP to dip to around 3-4 percent in March," Nayar added.
IIP data for March will be released on May 12.
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