To capture performance of economy in a better way, the government may soon expand the list of core sector infrastructure industries to include natural gas and fertilisers.
Currently, the government evaluates performance of six key sectors -- crude oil, petroleum refinery, cement, electricity, finished steel and coal -- on a monthly basis.
"The additions of two new categories is likely to increase the weight of the core sector to upto 30 per cent in the IIP," a senior official said.
The six infrastructure industries have a weight of 26.7 per cent in the overall Index of Industrial Production.
The official said that most likely, the new core sector data with these two new additions would be released after the launch of IIP with the new base year.
"The new IIP numbers will give the weight for these two categories," the official said adding if the new IIP would be launched on June 10 "we would also launch the new core data on the same day".
The base year for the new IIP series will be changed to 2004-05 from 1993-94 and is expected to be released on June 10.
According to experts,
The expansion of core sector list follows similar measures undertaken for computation of Wholesale Price Index and IIP.
The new WPI series, with base year 2004-05 and launched in September 2010, has 241 more items than the old index.
The WPI now measures a total of 676 items against 435 earlier.
The output of the six core infrastructure industries grew by 7.4 per cent in March 2011, an improvement from the 6.8 per cent expansion clocked a year ago.
For the 2010-11 fiscal, the key infrastructure sectors expanded by 5.9 per cent, as against 5.5 per cent in the previous year.
Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, an industry ministry arm, releases the core data.
