Business Standard reported that the spark of industrial recovery in July didn’t sustain, as factory production growth was almost stagnant in August, pulled down by contraction in manufacturing and mining.

Official data issued on Friday October 11th showed industrial growth fell to 0.6% in August against 2.7% in July, dashing hopes of early economic revival. The growth in August 2012 was 2%.

Among the broad sectors, only electricity fuelled the Index of Industrial Production to an extent, by clocking 7.2% growth in August. As such, electricity gave a 0.7% push to IIP, since it was a fifth of the total index.

However, this was nullified by a 0.1% contraction in manufacturing and another of 0.2% in mining. Manufacturing again fell after rising by a little over 3% in July. The data came on a day when finance minister Mr P Chidambaram said that he pinned hope of economic recovery on a reversal in contraction in the manufacturing sector, among other factors.

Mr Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at CRISIL said that "This shows industrial output continues to be stagnant. In fact, there was never any recovery in this year so far."

With this, industrial growth has been only 0.1% in the first 5 months of the current financial year against 0.2% in the same period of 2012.