Double boost for economy: Industrial output growth rebounds; inflation cools

New Delhi: India's industrial production grew at a nine-month high of 4.3 percent in August due to good performance of mining, electricity and capital goods sectors, government data showed.

The previous high in IIP growth was recorded at 5.7 percent in November 2016.

Meanwhile, the July IIP number was revised to 0.94 percent from 1.2 percent provisional estimates released last month.

The factory output growth, measured on the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), for April-August period accelerated to 2.2 percent from 5.9 percent in the same period last fiscal, as per the data released by the Central Statistics Office on Thursday.

The index of industrial production (IIP) growth was 4 percent in August 2016.

Manufacturing sector, which constitutes over 77 percent of the index, showed a growth of 3.1 percent in August as compared to a growth of 5.5 percent in the same month last year.

The output of mining and electricity sectors during the month accelerated to 9.4 percent and 8.3 percent from (-) 4.3 percent and 2.1 percent respectively in August last year.

Capital goods output, which is the barometer of investment, rebounded by 5.4 percent from a growth of 0.5 percent a year ago.

Meanwhile, retail inflation recorded at 3.28 percent in September. The consumer price index (CPI) based inflation stood at 4.39 percent during the same month last year.

It was 3.36 percent in the previous month.

Retail inflation has been steadily rising since June, when it eased to 1.46 percent - its slowest pace since government started releasing such figures in January 2012, based on combined data for rural and urban consumers.

Earlier this month, the RBI left interest rates unchanged, after cutting the key rate by 25 basis points in August, while raising its retail inflation projection for October-March to a range of 4.2 to 4.6 percent, and lowered its economic growth estimates.