Even though the government missed the GDP growth target of 5.7 per cent for the current financial year, but strong growth in the agriculture and services sector pushed it to reach 5.28 per cent, thus enabling an achievement of higher than 5 per cent growth after a decade.
The meeting of the National Accounts Committee to review the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), was held at the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). The secretary statistics division chaired the meeting.
An official source said that the robust growth in the agriculture sector, which had declined to negative 0.19 per cent last fiscal year, provided a strong push to the industrial sector as well as services sectors to perform better.
The growth of the agricultural sector during the current fiscal year remained 3.46 per cent against a target of 3.5 per cent, the industrial sector was recorded at 5.02 per cent as compared to a target of 7.7 per cent and services sector rebounded with 5.98 per cent as compared to a target of 5.7 per cent.
Elaborating further, he said that the agriculture sector witnessed a massive growth in maize that increased by 16.3 per cent and sugarcane by 12.4 per cent. This in-turn increased sugar output by a record 29.3 per cent. However, he said that the performance of the industrial sector would have been much better if the Pakistan Steel Mill had not remained closed during the year.
An official statement said that the NAC meeting considered provisional estimates for the year 2016-17 for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF) prepared on the basis of the latest data available for six to nine months and projected for the whole year.
The estimates of 2014-15 and 2015-16 for GDP and GFCF presented before the last meeting of the NAC, held on May 20, 2016, have been updated based on the latest available information and were also presented.
The NAC provisional GDP estimate for the year 2016-17 has grown a GDP growth of 5.28 per cent as compared to GDP growth of 4.5 per cent achieved the last fiscal year, 2015-16.
Agricultural sector: The agriculture sector grew by 3.46 per cent. The growth of crops during this year is 3.02 per cent. The growth in production of five important crops namely wheat, maize, rice, sugarcane and cotton is estimated at 0.5 per cent, 16.3 per cent, 0.7 per cent, 12.4 per cent, and 7.6 per cent respectively. Livestock sector registered a normal growth of 3.43 per cent.
Industrial sector: The overall industrial sector shows an increase of 5.02 per cent provisionally. The mining and quarrying sector grows by 1.34 per cent. The large scale manufacturing sector is driven primarily on QIM data (from July 2016 to March 2017) which shows an increase of 5.06 per cent. Major contributors to this growth are sugar (29.33 per cent), cement (7.19 per cent), tractors (72.9 per cent), trucks (39.31 per cent) and buses (19.71 per cent). Electricity and gas subsector show a low growth (3.40 per cent) due to reduced subsidies for WAPDA and its companies and KESC. The construction activity also increased by 9.05 per cent.
Services sector: The services sector shows a growth of 5.98 per cent. Wholesale and retail trade sector grew at a rate of 6.82 per cent. It is dependent on the output of agriculture and manufacturing and imports. Agriculture increased by 3.46 per cent, manufacturing increased by 5.27 per cent and imports increased by 19.32 per cent. Transport, storage and communication sector grew at a rate of 3.94 per cent. Finance and insurance sector show an overall increase of 10.77 per cent, mainly because of high growth of deposits (15 per cent) and loans (11 per cent). General government services grew by 6.91 per cent. It is mainly driven by the increase in salaries and the inflation. Other private services also positively contributed as whole.
