Industrial growth surges 2.5% in March, raises hopes of 6% GDP

New Delhi, May 10: Led by manufacturing sector, the industrial production during March improved to 2.5 per cent, raising hopes of economic growth crossing the 6 per cent mark in the current fiscal.

The improvement in the factory output during the month has been mainly on account of better showing by power, capital goods and consumer non-durables.

Upbeat over the growing trend in IIP since January, Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram said, "we are happy to see IIP numbers. "This is exactly the trend we are hoping. If it (the trend) continues, inflation comes down and growth begins to pick up, I am quite confident that growth in current fiscal would cross the 6 per cent mark."

However, the index of industrial production (IIP) growth during 2012-13 worked out to be only one per cent, down from 2.9 per cent in the previous fiscal.

Industrial production had seen a contraction of 2.8 per cent in March last year. Commenting on the data, chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) C Rangarajan said: "This will be the second or third month in which the manufacturing growth will be positive. We were for a time in the negative territory. All this clearly indicates that we are in the upward direction. We need a much, much stronger industrial growth, but certainly the direction in which it is moving is encouraging."

The growth in the industrial output for February has been slightly revised downwards to 0.46 per cent from the provisional estimates of 0.6 per cent released last month. Industrial output growth remained in positive territory for the third month in a row after showing a contraction of 0.5 per cent in December, last year.

PTI