Key Highlights
- India’s Index of Core Industries (ICI) rose 5% year‑on‑year in June 2026.
- The 2022‑23 financial year has been adopted as the new base year, superseding 2011‑12.
- Iron Ore joins the core group as the ninth industry, prompting a revised weight scheme.
- The Steel Index is now computed from gross production figures, aligning it with the Index of Industrial Production (IIP).
- A linking factor of 1.47 has been introduced to reconcile the revised ICI with earlier data sets.
Detailed Insights
The provisional June 2026 figures reveal a 5% uptick, outperforming May’s 3.2% and reflecting robust growth in electricity, iron ore, cement, coal, and steel. The revised base year of 2022‑23 better mirrors India’s current industrial landscape, capturing newer technologies and production shifts. By adding iron ore, the Bureau acknowledges its pivotal role across manufacturing, infrastructure and heavy industries. Adjusting the steel methodology from net to gross production harmonises it with IIP practices, while the exclusion of processed coal variants from the coal category prevents double‑counting. Updated industry weights now correspond to the latest IIP (2022‑23) allotments, ensuring the ICI’s totals sum to VIS 100. The linking factor of 1.47 provides a scaling constant that permits direct comparison between the new series and the old one, preserving continuity for longitudinal studies.
Key Concepts
- Index of Core Industries (ICI): a monthly gauge of production performance across nine primary Indian manufacturing sectors.
- Base Year: the time period against which changes are measured; set to 2022‑23 for the revised ICI.
- Linking Factor: a multiplier (1.47) that aligns the revised ICI with previous datasets.
- Steel Index Methodology: now uses gross production data to match I_flashdata
- Iron Ore Inclusion: the addition of iron ore elevates the core industry count from eight to nine, reflecting its supply‑chain significance.
