Preview: industrial production up 2.8%

Either way, the start of the festive season in India points to a rise in factory output in the run-up.

We believe there will be some amount of momentum ... September being just a month ahead of Diwali, where producers tend to start upping their production scale because they expect demand in the festive season to be high, said Yuvika Oberoi, economist at Yes Bank.

Infrastructure output or core output, which makes up nearly 38 percent of industrial production, grew 5.1 percent year-over-year in September, stronger than 2.3 percent in August, government data showed last week.

That index measures the output at eight of India's key infrastructure industries and is widely regarded as a precursor to the IIP data.

Of those eight, economists predict that strong performances by mining, manufacturing and cement will hold up the headline industrial production growth rate at levels similar to August.

Some expect industrial production to benefit, in coming months, from an improvement in domestic demand which has been bogged down by still-relatively high interest rates and rising food and fuel prices.

On the demand side there are some tentative signs that the industrial slowdown may have bottomed out, said A. Prasanna, economist at ICICI Securities Primary Dealership, who expects industrial production grew an annual 3.4 percent in September.

While the worst might be over for India's economic growth, the recovery will be gradual from that is expected to be the weakest fiscal year expansion in a decade.

But

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