The growth rate of six of the country's key infrastructure industries' accelerated to 8.7 per cent in February against 7.6 per cent in the same month a year ago, reviving hopes that industrial production would speed up and help arrest the current economic slowdown. However, the overall growth rate of these sectors for the 11 months from April to February 2007-08 remained lower at 5.6 per cent than 8.7 per cent for the corresponding period of fiscal 2006-07, due to below 5 per cent growth in the preceding four months. The infrastructure sector had grown by a poor 4.2 per cent in January 2008. February's above 1 percentage point year-on-year rise in core sector growth was largely on account of a massive increase in expansion of the electricity sector, which registered a growth of 9.6 per cent compared with 3.3 per cent in the same month last year. The six core sectors