Accounting for more than one-fourth of the total weight of Index of Industrial Production (IIP), these industries had recorded a 6.6 per cent growth in the first half of the current financial year.

The month of October saw a significant growth rate of 8.9 per cent over the same period last year for the core industries, according to an official press release here on Monday.

High growth was led by petroleum refinery products posting a growth rate of 19.2 per cent during April-October .

The cement sector grew at 17.5 per cent, steel grew at 11.7 per cent, power bt 7.9 per cent and crude petroleum at 0.8 per cent.

The coal sector's performance though improved over the first sixmonths, continued posting negative growth rate of 2.2 per cent during April-October this year. In the first half it had posted a negative growth rate of 2.7 per cent, official figures revealed.

The steel sector, which started showing signs of recovery from may this year, has posted an impressive growth rate of 13.2 per cent in October this year.

Despite a high growth rate of 8.3 per cent registered by the six sectors in aggregate, the output of power, steel, crude petroleum and petroleum refinery products declined in October compared to the month of September, while that of coal and cement increased.

In the power sector, the better performance of the sector has been attributed to thermal generation, but still the current generation was 7.7 per cent less than the peak level generation achieved in May this year.

The growth rate in coal output during October 1999 over the previous month has been impressive at 13.3 per cent whileon month to month basis the growth rate was 0.4 per cent in October 1999 over the same month last year. The cement industry, though, produced much less than the peak level of production achieved in 1999 during the month of June, posted a growth rate of 9.3 per cent during October this year over the same period last year.