India's industrial production growth decelerated to a six-month low of 2.9 per cent in February 2025, mainly due to poor performance of the manufacturing, mining and power sectors, according to official data released on Friday.
The government also revised upward the industrial growth figure to 5.2 per cent for January 2025 from the provisional estimate of 5 per cent released in March.
The factory output, measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), rose by 5.6 per cent in February 2024.
The previous low was recorded in August last year when the growth remained flat at zero per cent.
"As expected, the leap year base pulled down the YoY (year-on-year) growth of the IIP to 2.9 per cent in February 2025 from 5.2 per cent in January 2025....the deceleration was broad-based, with all the use-based categories, as well as two of the three sectors barring electricity, witnessing a slower growth in February 2025 vis-a-vis the previous month.
"While the growth performance of mining is expected to deteriorate in March 2025 relative to February 2025, this is likely to be offset by an uptick in electricity generation, amid steady manufacturing growth," Icra Chief Economist Aditi Nayar said.
The data released by the National Statistics Office (NSO) showed that the manufacturing sector's output growth slowed to 2.9 per cent in February 2025, down from 4.9 per cent in the year-ago month.
Mining production growth dipped to 1.6 per cent from 8.1 per cent a year ago.
Power output growth also slowed to 3.6 per cent in February 2025 from 7.6 per cent in the year-ago period.
In the April-February FY25, the IIP grew 4.1 per cent, down from 6 per cent recorded in the corresponding period of the preceding fiscal.
As per use-based classification, the capital goods segment growth accelerated to 8.2 per cent in February 2025 against 1.7 per cent in the year-ago period.
Consumer durables (or white goods production) grew 3.8 per cent during the reporting month against a growth of 12.6 per cent in February 2024.
In February 2025, consumer non-durables output contracted 2.1 per cent compared to a decline of 3.2 per cent a year ago.
According to the data, infrastructure/construction goods reported a growth of 6.6 per cent in February 2025, down from an 8.3 per cent expansion in the year-ago period.
The data also showed that the output of primary goods logged a 2.8 per cent growth in February 2025 against 5.9 per cent a year earlier.
The expansion in the intermediate goods segment was 1.5 per cent in the month under review, down from 8.6 per cent a year ago.
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