India's industrial output remains negative, contracts 1.3% in December

New Delhi: Industrial production declined for the second month in a row, registering negative growth of 1.3 percent in December, mainly due to drop in manufacturing and capital goods sector.

Factory output measured in terms of Index of Industrial Production (IIP) also declined by 3.4 percent in November, according to data released by Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The index had registered a growth of 3.6 percent in December 2014, it said.

During April-December period this fiscal, the industrial output grew by 3.1 percent compared to 2.6 percent a year ago.

The decline in December has been primarily on account of a massive drop in output of capital goods which showed a contraction of 19.7 percent in December compared to growth of 6.1 percent in the same month a year ago.

The manufacturing sector, which accounts for over 75 percent of the index, declined by 2.4 percent against a growth of 4.1 percent in December 2014.

However, the mining sector showed an improvement, registering a growth of 2.9 percent in the month as against a contraction of 1.7 percent in same month a year ago.

Power generation showed deceleration, recording a growth of 3.2 percent as against 4.8 percent growth in same month a year ago.
As per the used based classification, basic goods reported a marginal increase of 0.5 percent as against 5.9 percent in December 2014.

The consumer goods output increased to 2.8 percent as against 0.6 percent in December last fiscal.

Consumer durables, however, showed robust growth of 16.5 percent in December as against a contraction of 9.2 percent during the same month last fiscal.

However, the consumer non-durable segment showed a contraction of 3.2 percent in December as against a growth of 5.6 percent in the corresponding month.

In terms of industries, ten out of the twenty two industry groups in the manufacturing sector showed negative growth during December 2015 as compared to corresponding month of the previous year.