The growth in industrial production in 2008-09 would jump to 9.6 per cent, against 8.3 per cent last year, a think-tank CMIE has said in its latest report.

"The industrial production in the current financial would grow by 9.6 per cent, higher than the 8.3 per cent recorded during 2007-08," the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said in its report.

Earlier, CMIE projected the industrial production growth for 2008-09 at 10 per cent which was later revised to 9.6 per cent.

Although, recent trend in the Index of Industrial Production growth indicated a slowdown in industrial activity, sales growth for the manufacturing sector for June quarter did not show any sign of slowdown, CMIE said.

"The rising inflation and healthy sales (volumes) growth of manufactured products indicate that the consumption demand in the country is healthy," CMIE said.

The industry was also creating fresh capacities at an aggressive pace to meet soaring demand, with historically high investments of Rs 3lakh crore scheduled for commissioning in 2008-09, CMIE said.

Sectors like electricity, cement and oil refining would witness a huge capacity addition in the current financial year, CMIE said.

"We expect the growth in the manufacturing sector to accelerate to 10.3 per cent in the current year as against 8.6 per cent during the last year," CMIE said.

Besides, the mining and quarrying sectors and electricity generation
were expected to grow by 8 per cent and 6.3 per cent, respectively, CMIE said.