Daily Times

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%).