After the unexpectedly dismal performance in February, core sector industries have again looked up in March.

Six infrastructure industries improved their performance with a 7.2% growth in March against 4.7% in February. The sectors? expansion was also higher than the same month last year when they grew 3.3%.

In February 2010, the growth of six sectors?crude oil, petroleum refinery products, coal, electricity, cement and finished steel?was 4.7%, significantly lower than upwardly revised expansion of 9.5% in January 2010. During the month, the growth was lower in steel, crude oil, petroleum products and cement sectors.

However in March, the performance of finished steel makers improved by a whopping 9.2% as compared to 0.9% in the previous month, thanks partly to the low base a year ago. Other sectors that registered particularly good performance in March were coal and electricity.

?The better performance was backed by an increase in demand for these products, which drove the production. This also signifies that industrial production is likely to get better during the month,? KPMG executive director Arvind Mahajan said.

A better growth in March may lead to an improved expansion in the industrial output, as the trend has shown. Although core sector has a weight of only 26.7% in the index of industrial production (IIP), industrial production has moved in tandem with the growth rate of the six core sectors at least since November 2009.

The growth rate of industrial output has progressively moved up since November 2009 but came down in February, just like the expansion rate of the six infrastructure sectors. IIP?which represents industrial output?increased from 11.7% in November 2009 to 16.7% in January before it dropped to 15.1% in February, while the core sectors? growth came up from 6% in November to 9.5% in January and then came down to 4.7%.

Year-on-year finished steel expanded 9.2% in March 2010 against a negative growth of 1.8% in March last year. Coal, electricity and cement grew by 7.8% each against 5.3%, 6.3% and 10.1%, respectively, a year ago.

Crude oil production went up by 3.5% from a negative 2.3%.