Core growth output grows 3.7% in January

• The core sector output grew 3.7% in January which was lower than 4.1% in the previous month.
• It was pulled down by natural gas, refinery, fertiliser and electricity, official data released by NSO stated.

Core sector index

• It measures the output of eight infrastructure sectors-coal, steel, cement, fertiliser, electricity, natural gas, refinery products and crude oil.
• These eight core industries comprise 40.27 per cent of the weight of items included in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP)
• These are called core industries because of their likely impact on general economic activity as well as other industrial activity

Performance of Core sectors

• The core sector had grown 1.3% in January 2021.
• Six of the eight sectors - coal (8.2%), natural gas (11.7%), refinery products (3.7%), steel (2.8%), cement (13.6%) and electricity (0.5%) have reported growth in the month.
• Crude oil and fertiliser production shrank 2.4% and 2% respectively in January.
• In the first 10 months of the current fiscal, the core sector has grown 11.6% compared with 8.6% contraction in the year-ago period.

Impact of third wave

• The Omicron wave had impacted economic activity in the month after several states imposed restrictions to curb the spread.
• The third wave had an expectedly lesser impact on India's core sectors in January 2022 with the pace of growth increased gradually

Analysis of Growth

• On the positive side, compared with pre-Covid (February 2020) levels, output of all the core sectors was higher in January 2022.
• This reflects the resilience of the infrastructure industries to the Covid-related disruption
• But the global recovery faces fresh headwinds due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, said the principal economist, India Ratings and Research.

Conclusion

• This growth is likely to play a spoilsport to the nascent recovery witnessed in India while going forward.The core sector output growth is expected to remain tepid in the near term