New Delhi: The six 'core' infrastructure industries have registered a 5 per cent year-on-year growth in May, compared with 3.2 per cent in the same month of the last fiscal.

For the first two months of the current fiscal, the overall annual core sector growth worked out to 5.1 per cent, against 3.5 per cent during April-May 2009-10.

Among individual industries, cement grew by 8.6 per cent in May (over and above a year-on-year increase of 11.8 per cent in May 2008), while these amounted to 6.4 per cent (3 per cent) for electricity, 7.7 per cent (minus 4.3 per cent) for refined petro-products, 5.8 per cent (minus 4.3 per cent) for crude petroleum, 2.5 per cent (2.8 per cent) for finished steel and 0.1 per cent (10.4 per cent) for coal.

For the April-May 2010 period, cement production went up by 8.7 per cent year-on-year (11.8 per cent in April-May 2009), while being 6.6 per cent (4.8 per cent) for electricity, 6.5 per cent (minus 4.4 per cent) for refined petro-products, 5.5 per cent (minus 3.7 per cent) for crude oil, 3.6 per cent (0.8 per cent) for finished steel and minus 1.4 per cent (12.3 per cent) for coal.

During the first two months of the current fiscal, production of cement stood at 37.55 million tonnes (mt), against 34.56 mt in April-May 2009.

Output of steel similarly rose from 9.248 mt to 9.58 mt, while going up from 5.513 mt to 5.816 mt for crude petroleum and 23.471 mt to 25.007 mt for refined petro-products, and declining from 80.10 mt to 78.99 mt in the case of coal.

Electricity generation, too, was higher (135.0846 billion units versus 126.6776 billion units) during the period under review.