**Economy shows positive trends: •6.4pc GDP growth achieved •Poor performance by agriculture •Sharp pickup by manufacturing sector: Economic Survey 2003-04 released **
By Khaleeq Kiani
ISLAMABAD, June 11: Pakistan’s economy generally displayed positive trends during the outgoing fiscal 2003-04, achieving a 6.4 per cent GDP growth led by a sharp pickup of manufacturing and construction sectors.
On the downside, however, the agriculture sector’s poor showing was broad-based both in major and minor crops as it grew by a lacklustre 2.6 per cent, far short of its 4.2 per cent target. The growth of this sector remained even lower than last year’s 4.1 per cent and the 1990s average growth of 4.5 per cent.
Unemployment rate also grew to 8.27 per cent during the year. Numerically speaking, this means there are 3.72 million jobless people in the country, according to statistics.
Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, who launched ‘Pakistan Economic Survey 2003-04’ at a news conference here on Friday, said the economy had gathered greater momentum during the year and all the macro-economic indicators exhibited marked improvements over last year.
He read out a list of achievements that included higher-than-targeted growth rate accompanied by a stellar rise in industrial production; a double-digit growth in per capita income; strong upsurge in domestic investment; sharp increases in the consumption of electricity and gas; further fiscal consolidation, strong growth in exports and imports; a further strengthening of the external balance of payment and a sharp decline in the country’s debt burden.
Besides, not only the rising trend in poverty “has been arrested but a reversal has begun to take place” as poverty rate “has dropped by about 4.2 per cent from last year’s 32.8 per cent,” he said.
He said the country still faced a lot of challenges and the achievements were not commensurate with the country’s considerable potential. He cited job creation, poverty alleviation, and minimizing social inequality as some of the key challenges that lay ahead.
In terms of growth rate, the minister said only China, India and Thailand grew faster than Pakistan during the year. Within the overall borrowings from the banking system, the government borrowed Rs53.6 billion for budgetary support against a retirement of Rs52.5 billion in the same period of last year.
“The government sector was expected to remain fiscally prudent and therefore a meagre amount of Rs15 billion was earmarked for net budgetary borrowings and a retirement of Rs6 billion was projected for commodity operations,” the survey noted.
REBASING OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS: A major event of the year was rebasing of national accounts from the year 1980-81 to 1999-2000 that resulted overall size of the economy to go up from $70 billion to $95 billion. He explained that there was no impact on growth rate due to the change of base year.
As a result of rebasing, the official data now covered a new range of products and economic activities such as courier services, travel agencies, mobile telephone, etc.
AGRICULTURE: Major crops, accounting for 34 per cent of agricultural value addition, grew by 2.8 per cent against a 6.9 per cent rise in value addition a year earlier, and against a target of 5.5 per cent for 2003-04.
The performance of two major crops - cotton and wheat - was lacklustre as cotton suffered pest attacks and wheat crop was afflicted by lack of rain or too much rain.
The livestock sub-sector, which accounts for almost one half of overall value addition in the agricultural sector (49 per cent), witnessed a modest growth of 2.6 per cent.
MANUFACTURING: An unprecedented growth in the large-scale manufacturing sector, which grew by 17.1 per cent against a target of 8.8 per cent and last year’s actual rate of 7.2 per cent, spearheaded the overall growth in the sector.
Small-scale manufacturing continued to grow at an estimated 7.5 per cent rate. The construction sector grew by 7.9 per cent against 3.1 per cent of last year.
PER CAPITA INCOME: The per capita income in dollar terms increased from $526 to $652 per annum, showing an increase of 24 per cent.
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