In a survey of sector specific industrial performance, the apex chamber said that more than half of the total 113 industrial sectors registered moderate to excellent growth rates in the first six months of the year 1998-99.

The demand for basic goods like steel, cement and crude oil have picked up marginally over the previous year's level. But the industrial growth rate seems to be riding high on the wave of peak demand for consumer durables, particularly white goods.

Capital goods such as earthmoving, construction and mining equipments besides power transformers, telecom equipment and diesel engines are also showing moderate to high growth rates, the survey reveals. However, the sluggish recessionary trend that the economy has been witnessing for the past two years has left ascar in the growth of automobile sector, machine tools and textile machinery whose performances are negative. While steel production increased by only one per cent in the first half of the current fiscal due to low rate of growth in capital goods industries, cement clocked above five per cent production growth with a positive outlook for the remaining part of the year.

Dumping by CIS countries, South Korea and Japan along with continued increase in input cost have also dimmed the prospects of the steel sector, the CII survey said.

Oil and natural gas sector has been affected by increased production costs with production of petrol increasing by 5.5 per cent while LPG showed a growth rate of four per cent.

Overall fertiliser production increased by 5.2 per cent inspite of constraints such as falling international prices of urea and ammonia and withdrawal of concessional pricing for raw materials. Among automobiles, only motor cycles posted a high production growth rate of 27 per cent with demand recessionin the commercial vehicles segment and high input cost constraining the growth of other segments.