The government on Friday said it has included iron ore in the list of core infrastructure industries, a move that it said will help capture the performance of the economy more accurately.Consequently, the number of core industries has increased from eight to nine.
Currently, the government evaluates the performance of eight key sectors — crude oil, petroleum refinery, cement, electricity, natural gas, fertiliser, finished steel and coal — on a monthly basis.
“In view of the extensive use of iron ore 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 Commerce and Industry Ministry said in a statement.The new series, with 2022–23 as the base year, containing data for nine key sectors, will be released on July 20.The revised series will replace the existing Index of Core Industries (ICI) series with the base year 2011–12.The ministry also said that, to ensure consistency with the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), the revised ICI series uses gross production data for compiling the steel index, replacing the net production data used in the ICI (2011–12) series.In the coal sector, only raw coal has been retained in the revised series.Coal middlings and washed coal have been excluded to eliminate double counting, as both are derived from raw coal, it added.In 2011, the government had included natural gas and fertiliser in the core sector list.Production growth across the eight core infrastructure sectors slowed to a seven-month low of 0.5% in May, weighed down by lower output of coal, crude oil and refinery products.
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