The National Accounts Committee (NAC) on Tuesday issued a revised Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate from 2.50 percent to 2.51 percent for the FY 2023-24.
The committee also approved provisional estimates for GDP growth at 2.68 percent for the fiscal year 2024-25 that reflected a modest recovery amid mixed sectoral performance.
The meeting, chaired by Secretary Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives (PD&SI) Awais Manzur Sumra, approved quarterly GDP growth figures for the first three quarters of FY 2024-25, alongside final and revised annual estimates for the fiscal years 2022-23 and 2023-24. The NAC approved the quarterly GDP growth rates for the first (Q1) (Revised), Q2 (Revised), and Q3 during FY 2024-25 and annual growth rates for 2022-23 (Final), 2023-24 (Revised) and 2024-25 (Provisional). It approved the revised first and second quarter estimates of 2024-25.
Overall GDP for Q1 and Q2 for FY 2024-25 has witnessed a revised growth of 1.37% and 1.53% as compared to 1.34% and 1.73% estimated in last year’s NAC meeting. The updated growth rates in agriculture during Q1 is 0.84% as compared to 0.74% presented earlier. The upward revision in Q1 is due to improvement in other crops from 0.43% to 5.53% and forestry from -2.07% to 0.79%.
While there is improvement in other crops from 0.73% to 5.52%, forestry from -0.64% to 3.18% and fishing from 0.79% to 1.63%, important crops in Q2 have further moved down from -7.65% to -12.09% causing downward revision in agriculture from 1.10% to 0.79%.
Despite improvement in mining and quarrying from -8.06% to -6.25%, the industrial activities have posted downward revision from -0.66% to -0.91% due to decline in electricity, gas and water supply from +1.37 to -2.30% in the updated estimates for Q1.
The Q2 growth in industrial activities has witnessed a downward revision from -0.18% to -0.99% mainly due to electricity, gas and water supply, which moved down to -3.40% as compared to 7.71% estimated earlier. The revised growth in services during Q1 and Q2 has slightly improved from 2.21% and 2.57% to 2.28% and 2.59% respectively due to improvement in wholesale & retail trade, transportation & storage, information and communication, and public administration & social security.
The economy has posted a stable growth of 2.40% during Q3 of FY 2024-25. The growth in agriculture, industry and services stands at 1.18%, -1.14% and 3.99% respectively. In agriculture, although important crops have declined by -11.14% but other crops have grown by 4.84% on account of double digit growth in production of onion (11%) and mango (26%).
Livestock (4.42%), forestry (4.25%) and fishing (0.50%) have also registered positive growth rates during Q3 FY 2024- 25.
The negative growth rate in industry (-1.14%) is due to mining & quarrying (-3.96%), large-scale manufacturing (-0.89%), electricity, gas and water supply (-7.72%) and construction (-9.12%).
The overall growth in services is 3.99% during Q3 2024-25 with all the constituents contributing positively i.e. wholesale & retail trade (+1.57%), transportation & storage (+0.67%), information and communication (+18.44%), finance & insurance activities (+10.65%), public administration and social security (+13.73%) education (+4.63%), health & social work (5.06%) and other private services (+2.93%). The committee also approved the provisional growth of GDP at 2.68% during on-going FY 2024-25. The provisional growth rates in agriculture, industry and services are 0.56%, 4.77% and 2.91% respectively.
Industry in 2024-25, has shown a growth of 4.77% provisionally. Despite increase in the production of coal (2.84%), mining & quarrying industry has contracted by 3.38% because of decrease in production of natural gas (-7.05%), crude oil (-14.72%) and other minerals. Large scale manufacturing, which is based on Quantum Index of Manufacturing (QIM) (July-March), has witnessed a negative growth of 1.53% with mixed trend in the production of various groups. Services industry has also shown a growth of 2.91% in 2024-25 with positive contributions from all the constituents.
Wholesale and retail trade has witnessed a modest growth of 0.14% because of slower output growth in agriculture and manufacturing. Transport and storage industry has increased by 2.20% because of increase in output of water, air and road transport. Information & Communication has grown by 6.48% due to increase in output of computer programming and consultancy activities (24%).
Slower rate of inflation and low base effect has resulted into positive growth rates in Finance & Insurance and Public Administration and Social Security industries at 3.22% and 9.92% respectively. Further, both Education and Human health and Social Work industries have posted positive growth of 4.43% and 3.71% respectively.
Other private services have been estimated at 3.64%. On the basis of latest figures of the national accounts aggregates for FY 2024-25, the overall size of the economy stands at Rs.114.7 trillion i.e. US$ 410.96 billion as compared to Rs.105.1 trillion i.e. US$ 371.66 billion. Further, per capita income in Rupees is 509,174/- i.e. US$ 1824/-.However, the series of per capita income from 2016-17 onwards will be revised after the receipt of backward and forward projections of population from the sources on the basis of 2023- Population Census.