growth of Core sectors at 7.9% in Sept, highest under new series KOLLAM l thursday l october 22, 2026 l `10.00 l PAGES 12 l city EDITION Production in key infrastructure industries rose 7.9% in September, the fastest pace under the new series, official data showed on Wednesday Among segments, iron ore output rose by 18.4%, electricity by 11.4%, coal by 10.7% and refinery products by 10.3%, the data showed. Cement production rose 9.8% and steel by 4.9% in September compared with the same period last year. However, fertilisers (-11.7%), natural gas (-4.6%), and crude oil (-1.4%) output fell during the month under review The core sector expanded by 3.1% in September last year and 5.9% in August 2026, according to the government data CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI Bilateral trade pact with KIIFB spent `475cr on publicity, promotions India pretty close: Trump Govt shows, KIIFB’s bill Speculation rife as US prez claims it would be a “different kind of deal” D I PA K M O N D A L @ New Delhi Bilateral trade to be $500 bn in 3 yrs: Gor Signalling that the IndiaUS trade deal could be sealed US Ambassador to India soon, US President Donald Sergio Gor has said that Trump has said the pact is Washington has set an “pretty close” to being finalambitious target to double ised. Speaking to reporters at a its bilateral trade with India White House briefing on Tuesto $500 billion in the next day (US time), he termed it three years. Speaking at an “much different kind of deal” event in Mumbai, Gor cited without elaborating. opportunities in technology, “They want to make a deal. pharma and investment We’re going to make a deal. Pretty close, yeah,” Trump told reporters when asked about the his visit to India. prospects of the India-US trade Rubio, who reached India on pact which has been in the Tuesday, is scheduled to leave making since February on Thursday . 2025. Union commerce Trump’s statement minister Piyush Goyal comes at a time when has also indicated that Secretary of State Marthe agreement is 99% co Rubio is on a threeready and both sides day visit to India. It also were doing the legal comes days after the US scrubbing of the trade waived fresh sanctions pact. He said the deal Donald Trump that threatened up to would be signed when 100% tariff on India for the tariff structure is its purchases of Russian crude finalised and other issues such oil. as anti-dumping measures and Earlier, Rubio told media that Section 301 are addressed. the India-US trade talks were “The bilateral trade agreedown to technical details, add- ment’s first tranche has been ing that “it is something we an- finalised. It’s going through the ticipate seeing in a matter of final contours, the legal draftweeks, not months”. ing, and we hope to be able to He also attributed the US’s finalise that soon and operasanctions waiver to the efforts tionalise that once we get comto finalise the trade deal, while parable advantage or competihighlighting that a comprehen- tive advantage over our peer sive trade deal was almost com- countries,” Goyal said during plete, hinting at the possibility Centenary Conclave inaugurathat it could be signed during tion of SRCC last week. Rubio’s jam session at RIL in Jamnagar M S V id yanandan @ T’Puram Ente Keralam celebrations: K216 cr, more than double the K87 cr released for SC/ST projects A `5.4-crore nationwide campaign condemning the borrowing curbs imposed by the central government was among the publicity expenses worth hundreds of crores that the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB) took on its books. When KIIFB’s own auditor sought to know how the campaign was related to its functioning, the management reasoned that it was “un- CM with Me (2025-26): K6.14 cr Campaign against Centre’s borrowing curbs: K5.4 cr KIIFB auditor: Cannot vouch for the authenticity of expenses Source: KIIFB annual reports, Sudha Pillai committee report avoidable to sustain the existence of KIIFB”. In fact, the borrowing curbs stemmed partly from KIIFB’s own loans, which the Centre counted as state borrowing from 2020-21. An analysis of KIIFB’s annual reports from 2016-17 to 2025-26 reveals that it spent nearly `475 crore on publicity and promotional programmes. Nearly half of this, `216 crore, was towards ‘Ente Keralam’, the previous LDF government’s anniversary celebrations, over three years. It is more than double the `87 crore the board ever released for SC/ST development projects. KIIFB spent `52.03 crore on Ente Keralam in 2022-23, `67.45 crore in 2023-24 and `96.44 crore in 2025-26. The amounts were booked as project costs on the basis of government orders. For 2023-24, the auditor said it was “not able to express our opinion on authenticity of expenses” relating to Ente Keralam and other items.● More on P4 R A K E S H K U M A R @ New Delhi AS part of his efforts to encourage Indian refiners to buy more Venezuelan crude, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday visited Reliance Industries (RIL)’s oil-refining complex in Jamnagar, Gujarat. On Tuesday, Rubio had said Indian refiners should process more Venezuelan crude oil. In Jamnagar, Rubio and his entourage including US Ambassador Sergio Gor were welcomed by RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani, his wife Nita, and Marco Rubio their children Isha and Anant. They were given a tour of the refinery complex and were briefed on Reliance’s new energy giga-factories, RIL said in a statement. “The visit included discussions on the global energy landscape and opportunities for commercial partnerships across conventional and new energy .” Rubio also met business leaders Gautam Adani and Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran in Mumbai on Wednesday . F o u r c a t e g o r i es Final jury meeting to choose winners of RNG Sahithya Samman today Parami ta G hosh @ New Delhi All literary awards serve as signals of quality. They have their curatorial emphases and specific ambitions. Words that last, writers who take the job of imagination seriously , mark it with integrity, and speak in a unique voice, capturing attention in a crowded world of content. The Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman (RNGSS), instituted in honour of Ramnath Goenka, a stalwart of Indian print media and founder of The New Indian Express Group, returns for its fourth edition with a sharper aim. TNIE’s shortlist was decided after a meeting of the internal jury, comprising Santwana Bhattacharya, Editor, The New Indian Express Group; K Vaidyanathan, Editor, Dinamani; and Ravi Shankar, Consulting Editor, Sunday Magazine. Books published between July 2025 and June 2026 were considered for the longlist across three categories— Fiction, Non-Fiction and Debut. The fourth category the RNGSS , Lifetime Achievement Award, honours distinguished literary figures whose contributions have enriched Indian literature over the course of their careers. In the Best Fiction shortlist are Amitav Ghosh’s Ghost-eye, a climate-crisis novel that is about families, food and marginalisation; Rahul Bhattacharya’s Railsong, about a woman who grew up in an Indian railway township against the backdrop of a nation in motion, as steam engines gave way to diesel and India passed through the tumultuous 1970s; Geetanjali Shree’s Once Elephants Lived Here, an unsettling short story anthology of people caught in their pasts; and Ashwin Sanghi’s Ayodhya Alliance, a cross-cultural story in which an Indian industrialist and a South Korean technocrat uncover an ancient metallurgical force. Four books are part of the Best Non-fiction list, including Abhishek Choudhary’s Believer’s Dilemma — Vajpayee and the Hindu Right’s Path to Power 1977-2018, a mapping of the , Hindu Right movement from the margins to a party of power, and its first prime minister. Continued on: P7  EXPRESS READ SC stays police’s probe against Pinarayi New Delhi: IN a major setback for the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed for a week the Kerala Police probe taken up on ED’s recommendation against former chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the CMRLExalogic case and cautioned the central agency against exceeding its statutory limits and meddling with the powers of other agencies. P4