Infra Growth Dips To 5.3% In Nov

Hit by supply constraints, infrastructure industries put up a dismal performance in November 2007 a month that saw growth plummeting to 5.3 per cent from 9.6 per cent a year ago with crude petroleum becoming the weakest link among the key sectors. Impacted by sluggish increase in output since September, the cumulative expansion for the April-November period of the current fiscal also declined to 6 per cent as compared to 8.9 per cent in the corresponding months of FY''07. Crude petroleum, petroleum refinery products, coal, electricity, cement and finished carbon steel form the core infrastructure industries group, accounting for 26.7 per cent weightage in the overall Index of Industrial Production (IIP). Crude petroleum came out with the worst performance among all these sectors managing a paltry growth of 0.3 per cent in November against a healthy 9.8 per cent in the same month last year.