Industrial output shrinks, plunges to -5.1 pc

New Delhi: India's industrial output contracted 5.1 per cent in October from a year earlier, government data showed on Monday, much sharper than a median forecast in a Reuters poll for 0.5 per cent fall.

Manufacturing output, which constitutes about 76 per cent of the industrial production, fell an annual 6 per cent, the federal statistics office said in a statement.

During April-October, industrial production expanded 3.5 per cent. The output had grown 7.8 per cent in the 2010/11 fiscal year that ended in March, slower than 10.5 per cent clocked in the previous year.