New Delhi [India], July 20 : The Index of Core Industries (ICI) grew by 5.0 per cent in June 2026 (Provisional Estimate) on a year-on-year basis, compared with June 2025. This marks an improvement over the growth rate of 3.2 per cent recorded in May 2026 (Final Estimate), according to the Ministry of Commerce & Industry.
The index reflects the updated series released by the Office of Economic Adviser (OEA), Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), which replaced the earlier 2011-12 base year with the new 2022-23 base year.
Cumulative growth rate of the core industries during the period of April to June 2026 stood at 3.6 per cent (Provisional Estimate), compared to 1.0 per cent recorded in the corresponding period of the previous year.
Among individual sectors, performance varied significantly across commodities during the month.
According to the Ministry, "Iron Ore, Electricity, Cement, Steel, and Coal observed (Y-o-Y) growth rate of 43.9 per cent, 9.8 per cent, 9.8 per cent, 4.6 per cent, and 1.4 per cent respectively, whereas Natural Gas, Crude Oil, Refinery Products, and Fertilizers witnessed negative growth in June 2026."
The Ministry highlighted that specific core items provided the primary momentum to overall industrial growth. "Iron Ore and Electricity have been the major drivers of overall growth of ICI during recent months," the Ministry noted.
The transition to the new base year introduced structural changes in how the index tracks industrial activity, expanding the list of monitored sectors. "Owing to intensive use of Iron ore in the production process, and its contribution to industrial development, it has been included in the list of core industries as a new item in the revised series of ICI (Base Year 2022-23)," the Ministry stated.
With the addition of iron ore, "the number of core industries have increased from eight to nine in the new series."
Methodological changes were also applied to individual industry components to ensure consistency with broader economic indicators. "Gross production data has been used for compilation of the Steel index in the new ICI series, replacing the use of net production data in ICI (2011-12) series, to make it consistent with Index of Industrial Production (IIP)," the Ministry stated.
Furthermore, adjustments were made to the coal sector framework to eliminate redundant tracking. "Only Raw Coal has been retained in the new series of ICI, by excluding Coal Middling and Washed Coal in order to remove double counting, since Coal Middling and Washed Coal are made from Raw Coal," the Ministry added.
Regarding the weight distribution across sectors, "Following the earlier practice, the weights of the ICI (2022-23) series have been derived from the weights of the corresponding items of IIP (2022-23) series, which have been pro-rata distributed to 100," according to the data.