Belying any hope of recovery, the growth of eight core infrastructure industries slumped to a four-month low of 0.1 per cent in June, against a whopping 7.9 per cent year-on-year driven down by declining crude oil, coal, power and natural gas production.

 

According to the government data released yesterday, contraction in production of coal, crude oil, natural gas and electricity in the month was 3, 0.6, 16.7 and 1.2 percent, respectively.The eight infrastructure industries have a weight of about 38 percent in the overall industrial production.

 

Experts blamed the slowdown to poor policy decisions and infrastructural bottlenecks. "The demand in the economy has collapsed and what the RBI has done in its monetary policy will further push growth of these sectors down. The overall economic growth would be below 5 percent this fiscal," a senior economist said.Petroleum refinery production showed an expansion of 2.3 percent.Steel production grew 3.4 percent, while cement output was up 2.3 percent in the month.

 

During April-June period, the growth in eight infrastructure industries slowed to 1.6 from 6.9 percent in the same period last year.Growth was 3.2 percent in FY13 as against 5 percent in the previous financial year. In February, the growth of eight core sectors was -2.4 per cent.