Industrial Production Shrinks By 4.3% In September

The country's economic slowdown deepened as the industrial production measured by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) contracted for second month in a row in September. Index of industrial production contracted by 4.3 per cent in September, its fastest pace of fall in over six years, official data showed. Index of Industrial Production shrank by 1.1 per cent in the previous month. In September 2018, the factory output had expanded at 4.6 per cent.

"In terms of industries, seventeen out of 23 industry groups in the manufacturing sector have shown negative growth during the month of September 2019 as compared to the corresponding month of the previous year," Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation said in a press release.

Analysts polled by news agency Reuters expected September industrial output to fall 2 per cent.

The cumulative growth in April-September over the corresponding period of the previous year was 1.3 per cent.

"The industry group 'Manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers' showed the highest negative growth of -24.8 per cent followed by -23.6 per cent in 'Manufacture of furniture' and -22 per cent in 'Manufacture of fabricated metal products, except machinery and equipment'," the release added.

A slowdown was witnessed in the manufacturing sector, which declined by 3.9 per cent in September as compared to 4.8 per cent growth a year ago.

The power generation sector output dipped 2.6 per cent in September, compared to 8.2 per cent growth in the year-ago period.

Mining output too fell by 8.5 per cent in the month under review as against 0.1 per cent growth in the corresponding period last financial year.