V-shaped recovery of economic activity continues in Oct: CEA

Chief Economic Adviser K V Subramanian on Saturday said V-shaped recovery of economic activity continued in October and both factory output and core sector growth have inched up to the pre-COVID level. IIP eight-core index further inched up to pre-COVID levels. In contrast, 217 items grew on average in pre-COVID period Apr-12 to Feb-20.

Chief Economic Adviser K V Subramanian on Saturday said V-shaped recovery of economic activity continued in October and both factory output and core sector growth have inched up to the pre-COVID level. The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) rose 3.6 per cent in October, mainly due to better performance of manufacturing and electricity generation sectors.

The manufacturing sector, which has a weightage of 77.6 per cent in the IIP, recorded a growth of 3.5 per cent in October. In the year-ago period, the sector had a contraction of 5.7 per cent, according to data released by National Statistical Office (NSO) on Friday. ''V-shaped recovery of economic activity continued in Oct... IIP & eight-core index further inched up to pre-COVID levels. The broad-base recovery in IIP resulted in a growth of 3.6 per cent in October 2020 as compared to a contraction of 6.6 per cent in Oct-19,'' he said in a series of tweets.

Growth in IIP and eight core industries is on the back of broad-based growth in all the sectors and the consumer and investment goods were the main drivers of IIP growth in October 2020, he said. ''Across the board recovery: 243 out of 407 items in IIP basket grew in Oct-20. In contrast, 217 items grew on average in pre-COVID period (Apr-12 to Feb-20). The similar numbers for Sep-20 and Apr-20 were 196 and 28, respectively,'' he added.