The eight core industries expanded by 6.8% in February, against 6.4% in the same period last year, on healthy growth in coal, electricity and cement production.
The infrastructure industries had grown by just 0.5% in the previous month.
Electricity, coal and cement output grew by 8%, 17.8% and 10.8% in February respectively, according to the provisional data released on Thursday.
In the same month last year, electricity and cement production had grown by 7.2% and 6.5% respectively, coal output contracted by (-) 5.8%.
Crude oil production grew by 0.4% in the month under review against 12.2% in the comparable period of last year. Petroleum refinery products output too grew by 6.2 percent against a growth of 3.2 percent in the same month last year.
However, natural gas output contracted by (-) 7.6 %. Fertiliser and steel production grew by 4.1% and 4.3% in February as against 4.8 percent and 18.5 percent respectively in the same period last year.
During April-February 2011-12, the growth of core industries slowed down to 4.4%t from 5.8% in the same quarter last year.
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