Press Trust of India
Mumbai, July 1: The country’s private corporate sector ‘signaled a turnaround’ and recorded positive sales growth at the aggregate level in the last quarter of 2015-16 after successive contraction for four quarters, RBI said Friday. “Operating profit growth continued to improve at the aggregate level and across all sectors, mainly on account of improved sales growth and continued contraction in raw material expenses,” RBI said.
Services (other than IT) sector primarily contributed in the rise of year-on-year interest expenditure at the aggregate level and witnessed contraction in net profits, according to the data on performance of non-financial private corporate business sector during the fourth quarter of 2015-16. Aggregate sales grew by 2.3 per cent after contraction for four successive quarters. Sales growth also improved for the manufacturing and IT sectors, while it moderated for services (other than IT), the data said. At the aggregate level, operating profit grew by 16.8 per cent in the fourth quarter. Operating profit growth stood at 11.8 per cent for the manufacturing sector. It improved for both services and IT sectors.
“Net profit grew by 16.4 per cent in Q4 2015-16 against 15.9 per cent in the previous quarter.”Among the sectors, net profit showed a sharp deceleration for the manufacturing sector and contraction for services (other than IT) sector but improved significantly for IT sector,” the data said. At the aggregate level and in manufacturing and services (other than IT) sectors, expenses on raw material contracted at a slower pace than previous quarter. Year-on-year growth rate of staff cost moderated across sectors. Cost of raw materials to sales ratio declined at the aggregate level and in the manufacturing sector. RBI further said pricing power measured by operating profit margin remained at similar levels in January-March 2015-16 period as in the previous quarter at the aggregate level as also for the manufacturing sector. However, it improved for services and declined marginally for the IT sector.
