<div>Poor performance of natural gas, petroleum refinery products and fertiliser pulled down core sector growth (infrastructure sector growth) to 1.7 per cent in November from 5.8 per cent a year ago.<br /><br />However, the data is better than the previous month, October 2013, when the eight core sectors had contracted by 0.6 per cent. Infrastructure sector output fell 0.6 per cent in October. During the first eight months of the current fiscal year, infrastructure output grew 2.5 per cent from a year ago, the data showed on Tuesday.<br /><br />The industries, which also include coal, crude oil, steel, cement and electricity with a weight of about 38 per cent in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), have grown by 2.5 per cent during the April-November of this fiscal compared to 6.7 per cent in the same period of 2012-13.<br /><br />Experts said the sector's slow growth will impact IIP numbers for November.<br /><br />"The situation is extremely volatile. It will keep IIP numbers low," CRISIL Principal Economist D K Joshi said.<br /><br />However, he expressed hope that the situation would improve moderately in the coming months.<br /><br />The IIP numbers for November are likely to be announced on January 12.<br /><br />Industrial production entered the negative territory after three months, contracting by 1.8 per cent in October this year mainly due to poor performance of the manufacturing sector.<br /><br />Natural gas output fell 11.3 per cent in November year-on-year. Petroleum refinery production shrank by 5 per cent.<br /><br />Fertiliser output growth slowed down to 0.6 per cent in the month under review,. Steel production also decelerated by 3.9 per cent.<br /><br />Among those which put up a good performance, cement which registered a growth of 4.2 per cent and electricity generation grew at 5.9 per cent.<br /><br />Coal output grew by 2.3 per cent in November as against (-) 2.9 per cent in the same month last year.<br /><br />In the fiscal year ended March, infrastructure output grew 3.2 per cent compared with 5 percent in 2011-12. <br /><br />(Agencies)<br /> </div>
