Tracking a sharp drop in industrial growth, six core infrastructure industries expanded by a disappointing six per cent in September as against 10.6 per cent a year ago.
The growth for the April-September period of 2007-08 also dropped to 6.6 per cent from 8.7 per cent in the comparable period of the previous year.
Among the six key infrastructure industries, which contribute 26.7 per cent to the overall industrial growth, crude petroleum production put up the worst performance with a negative growth of 0.7 per cent against 9.4 per cent growth in the year-ago period.
Petroleum refinery sector grew by 6.9 per cent, about half the last year's figure of 13.4 per cent.
Electricity generation also fared poorly with a growth of 4.3 per cent against last year's 11.5 per cent, while cement was no better with an improvement of only five per cent compared to an impressive 16.5 per cent last year.
However, coal turned the table from a negative 0.8 per cent to positive 6.2 per cent and finished steel retained the double digit figure of 10.3 per cent.
The infrastructure growth numbers came on top of Monday's poor growth in industrial output, which declined to 6.4 per cent in September from 12 per cent last year.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram said on Monday that it was too early to judge whether the slowdown has set in. "I don't think we can draw conclusion from one month's figure, but overall services and industry are likely to grow between nine and 10 per cent this fiscal," he said.
Sharp drop in growth of electricity generation and a negative trend for crude oil production are "of serious concern," an Assocham official said.
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