India’s industrial recovery slowed sharply in December, with output growing just 0.4% year-on-year, and manufacturing activity contracting 0.1%, as per official estimates for the Index of Industrial Production (IIP).
Electricity output grew 2.8%, while mining activity rose 2.6%. The IIP data also shows capital goods output shrank 4.6% in December while consumer durables and consumer non-durables saw output shrink 2.7% and 0.6%, respectively. Consumer durables contracted for the fourth straight month.
Growth in other use-based segments was marginal and couldn’t lift the overall industrial output trend, with primary goods output rising 2.8%, infrastructure and construction goods growing 1.7% and intermediate goods seeing a mere 0.3% uptick.
Industrial output had grown a mere 1.34% in November as per revised data from the National Statistical Office (NSO). The NSO also revised upwards IIP numbers for September and October 2021, to 4.35% from 3.1% and to 4.01% from 3.2%, respectively, using updated production data. Economists said the latest IIP print was lower-than-expected.
Recovery in jeopardy
“Contrary to our expectations of 2.5%... growth has come in at 0.4% which is disappointing,” said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at Bank of Baroda. “The pent- up demand story witnessed in the earlier months has eased with the mini lockdown,” he added, noting that the main engines of growth the government was banking on for the coming year — investment and consumption — had fared dismally.
India Ratings economists Sunil Kumar Sinha and Paras Jasrai said that the lacklustre IIP growth puts a question mark over the current recovery and indicates that policy makers may have to take more measures as high commodity prices have made most inputs, particularly fuel and materials, expensive.
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