Despite the finance minister?s worry over a slowdown in key infrastructure sectors, the six core industries have registered a growth of 9% in August 2007 as against 6.6% in August 2006 riding on a buoyant performance by cement, coal and electricity sectors.

The six sectors have shown improvement since June this year when the growth rate was 3.8%, which moved up to 6.8% in July and to 9% in August. The six core-infrastructure industries have a combined weight of 26.7% in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP).

However, crude petroleum, petroleum refinery products and finished (carbon) steel registered poor performance for August compared with the same period last year.

Electricity generation, which has highest weightage in the IIP among core infrastructure sector, has registered a growth of 8.7% (in August 2007 as compared to 4.1% in August 2006.

Coal production also clobbered a growth of 8.7% in August 2007 as compared to a growth rate 0.6% in August 2006. Cement sector also shone with a growth of 16.2% in August 2007 compared to 2.9% in August 2006.

However, growth in crude petroleum production slowed with 6.4% in August 2007 as compared to a growth rate of 12% in August 2006.

Petroleum refinery production too faired badly, registering a growth of 8.2% in August 2007 as compared to growth of 12.1% in August 2006. Finished (carbon) steel sector proved to be another laggard registering a growth of 8.5% in August 2007 as compared to 9.5% in August 2006.

For the April-August period of 2007-08, decline in growth of all sectors except electricity, pulled down the overall performance of the core sectors to 6.6% from 8.3% in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.

Crude oil production registered a growth of 1% as compared to 3.1% in April-August 2006-07. Petroleum refinery production grew 10.4% compared to 12.1% in the same period of previous year.

Coal production also declined, registering a growth of 1.3% as compared to 6.6% in the year-ago period.

While cement production grew 8.9% as compared to 9.5%, steel output rose at a slower pace of 5.9% as compared to 12.5% in April-August 2006-07.

However, electricity generation registered a growth of 8.2% in April-August period 2007 as compared to 5.8% in the corresponding period.