New Delhi: Industrial production grew at 2 per cent in February after remaining negative for three months and retail inflation dropped to a 6-month low of 4.83 per cent in March, reflecting some improvement in the economy and offering further scope to RBI to stay accommodative.

Worried over the slow pace of recovery, India Inc has pitched for government intervention as well as a lower interest rate regime to accelerate growth.

“Competitive interest rates are necessary for reviving investor sentiment which in turn would help put the economy back firmly on the growth trajectory. However, it is now the responsibility of banks to pass on benefits of rate cuts to the end-consumer,” industry body Assocham said. Although there is an uptick in the industrial output in February, the manufacturing sector, which constitutes over 75 per cent of the index, crawled at 0.7 per cent as against a growth of 5.1 per cent in February 2015. The uptick in industrial output was mainly on account of improvement in mining, power and consumer durables. Factory output measured in terms of the index of industrial production (IIP) declined 3.4 per cent in November, 1.2 per cent in December and 1.5 per cent in January, data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed. The index had registered a growth of 4.8 per cent in February last year. During April-February, industrial output grew at 2.6 per cent compared with a growth of 2.8 per cent in the year-ago period. Mining too shaped up, logging a growth of 5 per cent as against a growth of 1.6 per cent in same month a year ago. Power generation accelerated, growing 9.6 per cent compared with 5.9 per cent growth a year earlier. The output of consumer durable goods grew 9.7 per cent in February as against a contraction of 3.8 per cent in the same month a year ago. However, capital goods, a barometer for investment flow, contracted 9.8 per cent in February compared with a growth of 8.3 per cent in the year-ago period. — PTI