India industrial output shrinks by 0.6pc in Dec

NEW DELHI, Feb 12 (AFP): India's industrial output shrank by 0.6 per cent in December, official data showed Wednesday, piling pressure on the government to bolster the struggling economy just months before elections.
The year-on-year output decline came amid stumbling consumer demand in the face of persistently elevated interest rates to curb stubbornly high inflation.
The December production figure was slightly better than the previous month's revised contraction of 1.3 per cent as well as analysts' expectations of around a one-per cent fall. But it was still bad reading for the scandal-plagued Congress government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which opinion polls suggest is headed for a crushing defeat in the general election due by May.
Manufacturing output, which accounts for more than three-quarters of the Index of Industrial Production, shrank by 1.6 per cent in December from a year earlier.
India's nearly $2-trillion economy is on track for a second straight year of below-five percent growth.
The government has forecast expansion of 4.9 per cent in the current financial year to March 2014 after the economy grew by 4.5 per cent the previous year, the most sluggish pace in a decade.