courtesy: BusinessStandard
The government data which was released on Friday stated that, industrial production grew by as much as 134.4 per cent in the month of April, mainly on account of a low base from last year. Government has held back the release of complete data of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for April, as it was done for the same month last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The factory output which is measured by IIP has rise up to 22.4 per cent in March 2021 and decreased a huge by 57.3 per cent in the April last year as COVID-19 lockdown and froze all the economic activity.
Industrial growth was flat in April if we compare the IIP to that in the same month of 2019. This indicates that the nascent economic recovery has been impacted by the second wave of the pandemic.
On the other hand manufacturing sector output, which accounts for more than three-fourths of the entire index, registered a growth of 197.1 per cent as against a decreased growth of 66 per cent in the year-ago period.
The government mentioned that the numbers are not compared to nationwide lockdown and other measures from the end of March 2020, had led to a majority of the establishments not operating in April 2020 and consequently.
Mining activity, which has a weight of over 14 per cent in the overall index, saw 37 per cent growth compared to a 26.9 per cent declined in the same month last year.
For the month of April 2021, the quick estimate number of IIP with base 2011-12 stood at 126.6.
But, because of low base, Consumer durables output saw the sharpest expansion of 1,943 per cent in April, from a decline of 95.6 per cent last year.