India’s Core Industries Performance:
The combined Index of Eight Core Industries (ICI) in India exhibited a provisional growth of 3.8% in December 2023 compared to 2022. Except crude oil, all other sectors have majorly performed well.
- The ICI serves as a crucial metric, encompassing Cement, Coal, Crude Oil, Electricity, Fertilizers, Natural Gas, Refinery Products, and Steel, collectively constituting 40.27% of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP).
- IIP is a prime indicator of economic development for the measurement of trends in the behaviour of Industrial Production over a period of time with reference to a chosen base year.
- Current base year for the IIP in India is 2011-12.
- The weaker core sector growth in December was largely due to an unfavourable base, with with the overall index of the eight core industries having surged by 10.1 percent month-on-month in December 2022 – the period on whose basis the year-on-year growth in output in the last month of 2023 is calculated.As such, all but two of the sectors saw poorer growth performance in December compared to the growth numbers they had posted in November.
