Industrial production in India grew 1 per cent year-on-year in December 2020, showing positive trend again, after a month’s gap, helped by better performance of the manufacturing sector, official data released on Friday showed.
Production in the manufacturing sector, which constitutes 77.63 per cent of the index of industrial production (IIP), recorded a growth of 1.6 per cent in December 2020, as per quick estimates released by the National Statistics Office (NSO).
Production in the mining sector declined by 4.8 per cent in December 2020. However, power generation grew by 5.1 per cent. The index had grown by 0.4 per cent in December 2019.
Industrial production in the country had plunged 18.7 per cent in March last year following the Covid-19 outbreak and remained in the negative zone till August 2020.
With the resumption of economic activity, factory output posted growth of one per cent in September. IIP had grown by 4.2 per cent in October. In November 2020, factory output had contracted by 2.1 per cent.
The government had imposed a lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19 infections on 25 March 2020.
With gradual relaxation of restrictions, there has been a relative improvement in economic activities as well as in data reporting.