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Industrial growth continues to be sluggish, with official data pointing to a 3.6 per cent year-on-year production increase in February.
That marks a fourth successive month of lacklustre growth in the official index of industrial production (IIP), which is partly due to the so-called base effect: February 2010 recorded a year-on-year rise of 15.1 per cent.
For the April-February period as a whole, the IIP growth amounted to 7.8 per cent, as against 10 per cent in corresponding 11 months of 2009-10.
High base
The impact of a high base is likely to show up in March as well, which raises a question mark over the Centre's projection of a real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 8.6 per cent for 2010-11.
That figure, according to the Advance Estimates released on February 7, assumed an industrial growth of 8.2 per cent, which now seems unlikely.
However, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, felt that the GDP growth estimate would not have to be revised downwards “because I think agricultural growth will be higher than the earlier forecast (of 5.4 per cent)”.
In fact, the Agriculture Ministry had, only last week, upped its previous production estimates of foodgrains, oilseeds and sugarcane.
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