India’s Index of Core Industries gets an updated series: What has changed? | Explained
The Central Government has released a revised series of the Index of Core Industries (ICI), updating its base year from 2011-12 to 2022-23.
Iron Ore has been added as a new core industry, taking the count of core industries from eight to nine.
The methodology for the Steel Index now uses gross production data (instead of net production data) to align with the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) methodology.
In the Coal sector, only Raw Coal is retained in the revised series; Coal Middlings and Washed Coal have been dropped to avoid double counting since both are derived from Raw Coal.
Weights for the new ICI series have been derived from the weights of the revised IIP (2022-23 base) series released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).
Index of (Eight, now Nine) Core Industries
The Index of Core Industries is a monthly production-volume index tracking output of a set of infrastructure/basic-input industries that together carry a large weight in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), released by the Office of the Economic Adviser under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, roughly a week before the full IIP release, making it a widely watched advance indicator of industrial performance.
Key Details
- The earlier (2011-12 base) series covered eight core industries — Coal, Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Petroleum Refinery Products, Fertilizers, Steel, Cement and Electricity — together accounting for roughly 40% of the weight in the IIP.
- The revised (2022-23 base) series adds Iron Ore as a ninth core industry, reflecting its significance as an input to industrial production.
- ICI is a pure production-volume index (unlike IIP, which also factors in manufacturing/mining/electricity sub-classification across use-based categories); it is compiled and released by DPIIT's Office of the Economic Adviser, not MoSPI.
The revised series both updates the reference base (2022-23) and expands sectoral coverage (nine industries instead of eight), directly answering why and how the ICI has changed, and confirming which body is responsible for it.
Base-Year and Weight Revisions Across India's Industrial Statistics
Base-year revisions for production and price indices realign weights and coverage to current economic structure, and are typically synchronised across related indices to preserve consistency: the IIP itself has been rebased to 2022-23 by MoSPI, and the ICI's revised weights are explicitly derived from this new IIP base, rather than computed independently. This inter-linkage is a recurring UPSC-testable detail distinguishing which authority owns which index and how they are methodologically tied together.
Key Details
- IIP (compiled by MoSPI) uses a use-based classification (basic goods, capital goods, intermediate goods, infrastructure/construction goods, consumer durables and non-durables) in addition to the sectoral (mining, manufacturing, electricity) classification.
- The ICI's Steel Index methodology shift to gross production (from net production) is specifically intended to make it methodologically consistent with how steel is measured within IIP.
- The Coal sector simplification (retaining only Raw Coal) removes double counting since Coal Middlings and Washed Coal are downstream, derived products of Raw Coal.
The revised ICI series is not a standalone change — its weights are anchored to the new IIP (2022-23) weights from MoSPI, and its Steel Index methodology is explicitly harmonised with IIP, illustrating how India's industrial statistics ecosystem is interlinked across DPIIT and MoSPI outputs.
- New ICI base year: 2022-23, replacing the earlier 2011-12 base.
- Number of core industries increased from eight to nine, with the addition of Iron Ore.
- Steel Index now uses gross production data (previously net production data) for consistency with IIP.
- Coal sector retains only Raw Coal in the revised series, dropping Coal Middlings and Washed Coal.
- ICI is released by the Office of the Economic Adviser, DPIIT, Ministry of Commerce and Industry; its revised weights are derived from MoSPI's IIP (2022-23) series weights.