How has been the IIP numbers for the latest month?

With the base effect vanishing, the IIP growth for October at 3.2% is rather appreciable. The IIP growth had grown by 4.5% in Oct-20 so there is genuine growth in industrial production, although it has been largely led by the mining sector. Within the overall gamut of IIP, the manufacturing sector's output grew 2% in the month of October 2021 while mining grew by 11.4% and power generation increased 3.1% in the month on a yoy basis.

The first seven months IIP cumulative data shows that overall IIP is still marginally below the corresponding 2019 levels as the COVID 2.0 variant and now the Omicron variant have dampened the rapid recovery of IIP. The big challenge will be to bring back manufacturing to erstwhile levels as that is the lagging factor in the whole IIP story.