Even though the government remains embroiled in a grave political crisis, the country is likely achieve a GDP growth rate of more than five per cent after nine years, as the meeting of the National Accounts Committee is convened to finalise the national accounts for the outgoing financial year (FY17) here on May 15.
An official source said that the committee will be discussing the provisional growth figures for the outgoing financial year and finalizing figures for the last financial year. The government had projected a growth target of 5.5 per cent for the current fiscal year, as compared to 4.7 per cent GDP growth of last fiscal year.
The source said that the GDP growth is estimated to remain close to 5.2 per cent, already assessed by the World Bank. The growth would be in the range of 5.2 to 5.5 per cent and the final figure would be assessed by the committee.
He said initial results show an improvement in the agriculture sector that showed a negative growth for the first time in 40 years, during the last financial year. The incentives provided on agriculture inputs like reducing the GST on fertilizer, have played an important role in crop output enhancement. All the major crops like wheat, maize, rice and sugarcane have shown improvement in production. Cotton production has remained low but is higher than the last year’s yield.
However, the source said that the depressed commodity prices have overall affected the agriculture sector. The growers of wheat, rice and sugarcane got a lesser return on their produce. If the government had been able to export the surplus commodities, it would have further improved the agriculture output.
The source said that the manufacturing sector has shown good growth. The availability of electricity and gas have led to the increase in the output of the manufacturing sector. The growth would have been higher if the exports would have increased during the outgoing financial year. The services sector, the source said, had shown good results like the past years.
