Mumbai: Corporate India is expected to report a 28.4% rise in sales during Q2 FY 09, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said in its monthly report here.

Although a tad lower than the 32.5% rise in the June 2008 quarter, sales growth during July-September 2008 is going to be the second-highest quarterly growth in at least the last 11 years.

“We expect a growth in Q2 FY 09 to be driven by a healthy 33.9% rise in net sales of the manufacturing sector and 52.6% and 42% rise in the income of the crude oil and construction sectors, respectively,” it said.

Sectors like electricity, banking and real estate are expected to grow by less than 25%. Non-financial services like hotels, recreation, health, trading, transport, communication and IT are collectively expected to report a 25.6% rise in sales in the September 2008 quarter, it said.

“We believe that the Indian corporate sector will once again fail to translate the impressive sales growth into a healthy profit growth. Corporate India’s net profits are expected to decline by 28% in the September 2008 quarter.

The steep fall in profits is atributed to the refineries, which are expected to incur net losses of Rs19,897-crore in the Sepember 2008 quarter,” the report stated.