The National Accounts Committee (NAC) on Tuesday approved the provisional growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country at 2.38 per cent for the ongoing fiscal year (2023-24). The approval was accorded in the 109th meeting of the NAC, which was held with the Secretary Ministry of Planning, development and Special Initiatives in the chair, said a press release issued here today. The committee approved the quarterly GDP growth rates for first-quarter (revised), second (revised), and third quarter during the fiscal year 2023-24 and annual growth rates for 2021-22 (final), 2022-23 (revised) and 2023-24 (provisional). The committee approved the revised first and second quarters estimates for 2023-24. Overall GDP for the first quarter and second quarter for the fiscal year 2023-24 have witnessed a revised growth of 2.71% and 1.79% as compared to 2.50% and 1.0% estimated in the 108th NAC meeting. While the revised growth in agriculture during the first quarter has remained stable at 8.59% as against 8.58% presented earlier, the growth in the second quarter has improved from 5.02% to 5.83% mainly due to upward revisions in important crops (from 8.12% to 12.92%) and other crops (from -0.31% to 0.65%). Despite significant improvement in mining and quarrying from 7.78% to 15.46%, the industrial activities have posted downward revision from -0.24% to -2.44% due to decline in electricity, gas and water supply from -12.70 to – 27.62% in the revised estimates for the first quarter. However, the second quarter growth in industrial activities has witnessed an upward revision from -0.84% to 0.09% on account of positive changes in mining and quarrying (from -4.17% to 4.39%) and construction (from -17.59% to -10.85%) despite downward revisions in large-scale manufacturing (from 0.48% to -0.83%) and electricity, gas and water supply (from 1.54% to -0.28%). The revised growth in the services sector during the first quarter and second quarter has improved from 0.92% and 0.01% to 2.02% and 0.75% respectively due to improvements in information and communication, public administration and social security, education and human health and social work activities. The economy has posted a stable growth of 2.09% during the third quarter of fiscal year 2023-24. The growth in agriculture, industry and services stands at 3.94%, 3.84% and 0.83% respectively. During the third quarter all the constituents of agriculture have contributed positively important crops (2.89% due to wheat), other crops (1.14%), cotton ginning (61.75%) and livestock (4.20%). Despite the negative growth of the construction industry (-15.75%), the industrial growth of 3.84% is attributable to mining & quarrying (0.63), large-scale manufacturing (1.47%), and electricity, gas and water supply (37.3%). The overall growth in services is positive (0.83%) during Q3 2023-24 albeit having mixed trends in its constituents i.e. wholesale & retail trade (0.38%), transport & storage (0.91%), information and communication (-5.92%), finance & insurance activities (-7.11%), public administration and social security (-6.38%) and education (10.38%). The committee approved the overall final growth of annual GDP during the fiscal year 2021-22 at 6.18%, which was estimated at 6.17% in the 107th meeting. The final growth rates in agriculture, industry and services during the fiscal year 2021-22 are 4.21%, 7.01% and 6.69% respectively. Further, the revised growth during the fiscal year 2022-23 is -0.21%, which was estimated at -0.17% in the previous meeting. In the revised estimates, agriculture has improved from 2.25% to 2.27%, the industry has remained stable i.e. -3.74% vs. -3.76%, whereas services have slightly declined from 0.07% to -0.01% due to a downward revision in education (from 9.94% to 5.15%) and human health & social work activities (10.57% to 8.87%). The provisional growth in agriculture is estimated 6.25 %, whereas it is 1.21% for both industry as well as services. The healthy growth of agriculture is mainly due to double-digit growth in important crops including 16.82% on the back of bumper crops of wheat (11.64% from 28.16 to 31.44 million tons, cotton 108.22% from 4.91 to 10.22 million bales) and rice 34.78% from 7.32 to 9.87 million tons. The two important crops including sugarcane (-0.39% from 87.98 to 87.64 million tons) and maize (-10.35% from 10.99 to 9.85 million tons) have posted negative growth. Further, provisional growth in other crops is estimated 0.90%, cotton ginning & miscellaneous components 47.23%, livestock 3.89% and forestry 3.05%. Industry in 2023-24, has shown a growth of 1.21% provisionally. mining & quarrying industry has witnessed a growth of 4.85% because of an increase in the production of crude oil (1.51%), coal (37.72%), other minerals (7.57%) e.g. limestone (7.95%), marble (23.22%). Large-scale manufacturing, which is based on Quantum Index of Manufacturing (QIM), has witnessed a nominal growth of 0.07% with mixed trend in the production of various groups like food (+1.69%), beverages (-3.43%), textile (-8.27%), tobacco (-33.59%), non-metallic mineral products (-3.89%), wood (+12.09%), coke & petroleum (+4.85%), and pharmaceuticals (+23.19%).