The centre for monitoring Indian economy (CMIE) projects the growth in industrial production in 2008-09 likely to go up to 9.6% as compared to 8.3% in the last year.

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

Despite, recent trend in the index of industrial production (IIP) 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 3000 billion 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 added.

CMIE expect the growth in the manufacturing sector to accelerate to 10.3% in the current year as against 8.6% during the last year.

Besides, the mining and quarrying sectors and electricity generation were expected to grow by 8% and 6.3%, respectively.