Mumbai, Dec 21 (KNN) The upturn in sales growth is noticeable for the manufacturing and the IT sectors, while slowdown continued in the non-IT services sector, said RBI.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) yesterday released, on its website, data on the performance of non-financial private corporate business sector during the second quarter of 2013-14 (July-September 2013).

According to the data, the net profit of the manufacturing companies in the private sector fell by 27.4 per cent during the second quarter at Rs 23,000 crore compared to a 5 per cent fall in the first quarter (April-June) at Rs 25,200 crore.

Sales growth during the second quarter was 7.6 per cent higher at Rs 5.57 lakh crore versus a growth of a mere 0.8 per cent to end first quarter at Rs 5.33 lakh crore.

"The upturn in sales growth is noticeable for the manufacturing and the IT sectors, while slowdown continued in the non-IT services sector," the RBI said.

“Among the major industries, sales growth was high in textiles, coke and refined petroleum products, chemicals and chemical product industries. However, cement and cement products, iron and steel, motor vehicle and transport equipment and machinery industries continued to record contraction in sales,” said the apex bank.

"The improvement in sales growth was not reflected in profit growth, net profit growth and profit margins," the RBI said.

Sales growth (Y-o-Y) improved in Q2:2013-14 after successive deceleration since Q3:2011-12.

This improvement was due to the large (annualised sales above `10 billion) companies.

“Sales of small (annualised sales below `1 billion) companies, however, continued to contract,” said RBI.

For the services sector (non-IT), profit during the second quarter of FY14 was down by 23.2 per cent at Rs 2,500 crore, while profits fell at a much higher 42.7 per cent rate to Rs 2,600 crore in the previous quarter.

Sales in this segment during the second quarter, however, grew by only 4.9 per cent at Rs 67,800 crore, slower than the growth of 10.8 per cent at Rs 73,300 crore logged in the first quarter.

The Information Technology (IT) sector remained positive with a rise of 26.3 per cent growth in net profit at Rs 11,700 crore during second quarter, versus just 2.4 per cent rise at Rs 8,400 crore in the first quarter.

Its sales rose by 18.9 per cent to Rs 57,300 crore during July-September period against a growth of 13.2 per cent at Rs 56,400 crore during April-June, the data showed.

Overall, net profit covering all the three sectors, was down by 20.5 per cent at Rs 38,200 crore in the second quarter. Profits had fallen by a lower 10.9 per cent to Rs 37,600 crore in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, the overall sales grew by 7.4 per cent at 7.43 lakh crore during July-Sep versus just a 2.6 per cent rise in the previous quarter at Rs 7.26 lakh crore, RBI data showed.

In its data based on performance of 2,708 non-financial private corporate businesses covering manufacturing, IT and services firms, the RBI said sales growth during the quarter improved on the back of higher sales by bigger companies with annualised sales of over Rs 100 crore.

During the first quarter, as many as 2,768 companies were covered for data compilation. (KNN/SD)