The six infrastructure industries, which apart from cement and steel include electricity, crude petroleum, petroleum refinery products and coal, recorded a growth rate of 5.9 per cent during the month of April.

The index of industrial production (IIP) during 1998-99, it may be recalled, slipped to 3.8 per cent from 6.6 per cent recorded during the previous financial year, making the last fiscal one of the worst from the point of view of industrial output in the past several years. On this background, the better performance of the six infrastructure industries which include key sectors like cement and steel during April 1999 assumes significance and augurs well for the industry.

The only sector which has continued to perform badly was coal. The coal output slipped by 9.0 per cent during April 1999. However,the other sectors recorded a positive growth. The output of petroleum refinery products went up by 20.9 per cent, electricity by 4.8 per cent and crude petroleum by 3.3 per cent.

During the period January-April 1999, the electricity generation was up by 5.8 per cent, steel 2.5 per cent, crude petroleum 0.4 per cent, petroleum refinery products 13.4 per cent and cement 13.6 per cent. The coal, however, recorded a negative growth rate (-7.0 per cent).

The cumulative output during January-April 1999, decelerated to 4.0 per cent from 5.3 per cent recorded in the corresponding period of the last year.As far as individual sectors are concerned, the cement recorded the most robust growth with production during April 1999 totalling 8.63 million tonnes as compared to 6.79 million tonnes in the corresponding month last year recording an increase of 27.1 per cent.

In case of steel, the output in April worked out to be 2.06 million tonnes as against 1.97 million tonnes during the corresponding month last year.Although the growth rate is modest at 4.1 per cent in April, there are indications that this sector might perform better during the current financial year because of likely spurt in construction activity.

In petroleum sector, crude production recorded a modest growth with the output going up to 2.7 million tonnes during April as compared to 2.61 million tonnes in the corresponding month last year. However, as far as refinery products were concerned, the production shot up to 5.64 million tonnes in April 1999 from 4.66 million tonnes in April 1998 recording a growth rate of 20.9 per cent.

In case of electricity, the thermal and nuclear segment did well by recording a growth rate of 11.0 per cent in April, but hydro generation slumped by 22.2 per cent pushing down the growth rate to 4.8 per cent.The only sector which failed to do well was coal. The output has been declining for the past several months and in April 1999 it totalled 20.0 million tonnes which was lower than the output of 22.0 million tonnesrecorded in the corresponding month of April.