The government will release a revised Index of Core Industries (ICI) on Monday by adding iron ore to the gauge and increasing the number of industries tracked to nine from eight.
The revised ICI series will have 2022–23 as the base year, updated from 2011-12 in the current series.
Currently, the ICI measures the production performance of core industries—coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilizers, steel, cement and electricity.
In view of iron ore’s extensive use in industrial production and its significant contribution to industrial development, iron ore has been included as a core industry in the revised ICI series, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade said.
Growth in industrial activity, as measured by the ICI, has been moderating in recent years. As per the FY12 ICI series, growth in the output of eight core industries was at a five-year low of 2.7% in FY26. In May, the eight core industries grew at a 7-month low pace of 0.5%.
The OEA on Monday will release the revised ICI series for June and back series data from April 2023.
This marks the first revision of the ICI since 2017, when the base year was updated from FY05. It also follows similar exercises for most macro-economic data in India in 2026. The statistics ministry earlier this year revised the CPI, GDP, and Index of Industrial Production (IIP) series, while the DPIIT introduced a revised WPI and new Producer Price Indices in June.
The combined weight of these nine core industries is 32.88% of IIP, up from 40.27% in the previous series.
Electricity has the highest weightage in the new nine core industries index at 30.93%, up sharply from 19.85% in the FY12 series. Refinery products, coal, natural gas, crude oil, and cement saw a sharp reduction in their weightages in the new index.
In the old ICI, Refinery Products had the largest weight of 28.04%, which has come down to 22.57% in the new series.
To ensure consistency with the IIP, the revised ICI series uses gross production data for compiling the Steel Index, replacing the net production data used in the old ICI series.
In the Coal sector, only Raw Coal has been retained in the revised ICI series. Coal Middlings and Washed Coal have been excluded to eliminate double counting, as both are derived from Raw Coal.