New Delhi: With poor performance in manufacturing and electricity output, India’s industrial production growth slowed down to a 5-month low of 4.1 per cent in March, amid the West Asia crisis. This figure, however, marked a significant dip as compared to the acceleration of 5.2 per cent recorded in February, the government said on Tuesday.
As per the data issued by the National Statistics Office (NSO), the factory output or index of industrial production or IIP, expanded by 3.9 per cent in March 2025. The NSO, however, revised the industrial production growth for February 2026 to 5.1 per cent from the provisional estimate of 5.2 per cent released last month, while the previous low of IIP growth was recorded at 0.5 per cent in October 2025.
The latest print of the factory output, however, reflects that the impact of higher input costs on production margins and demand is showing amid the disruption of supply chain in the ongoing West Asia war, even as some high-frequency indicators showed some mixed resilience.
As per the NSO data, the manufacturing sector’s output growth remained subdued at 4.3 per cent in March 2026 compared to 4 per cent in the year-ago month, while power generation grew marginally by 0.8 per cent in March against 7.5 per cent expansion in the year-ago period. “However, mining production growth improved to 5.5 per cent from a meagre growth of 1.2 per cent recorded a year ago,” the data showed.
Commenting on the data, Aditi Nayar, chief economist, ICRA Ltd said that the stronger-than-expected IIP growth performance contrasted with the 0.4 per cent contraction seen in core output. “However, it suggested that the non-core portion of industrial output rose at a robust 7.8 per cent in the month, shrugging off the expected adverse impact of the onset of the West Asia crisis,” Nayar said.
“The performance of the six use-based segments was mixed, with an equal number seeing an improvement and a deterioration in March 2026 relative to February 2026. The decline in the YoY growth in infrastructure/construction goods output to 6.7 per cent from 11.1 per cent in the previous month, slipping to single digits after a gap of 4 months, reflects the softening in growth in steel and cement output,” she added.
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