Realistic Economic Indicators By Muhammad Zahid Rifat
Briefly speaking about sectoral performance for want of adequate space, the agriculture sector during FY2022 recorded a remarkable growth of 4.40 percent surpassing the target of 3.5 percent and last year’s growth of 3.48 percent. This growth was mainly driven by high yields, attractive output prices and supportive government policies, better availability of certified seeds, pesticides and agriculture credit.
Livestock has a share of 61.89 percent in agriculture and 14.04 percent in the GDP, recorded a growth of 3.26 percent in 2021-22 compared to 2.38 percent during the same period last year.
The domestic production of fertilisers during July-March FY 2022 increased by 1.9 percent over the same period of last year mainly due to the running of two Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) based plants, FatimaFert and Agritech limited from September 2021 to March 2022. The import of fertiliser also decreased by 6.2 percent during the period under review.
The performance of the Large-Scale Manufacturing (LSM) sector stood tremendously high with 10.4 percent during July-March FY2022 as compared to the growth of only 4.2 percent during the same period last year. This could easily be attributed to prudent measures and continuous support of the government with rising global demand, easy access to credit and partially subsidised energy supplies which helped in boosting the business sentiments and achieving higher growth of the LSM sector.
As regards the transport and communications sector, presently Pakistan has 48 national highways and strategic roads with a total length of 14480 kilometres. In the first quarter of 2022, PIA added two airbuses A320 in its fleet, Pakistan Railways comprised a total of 488 Locomotives for a 7791 Km route across the country.
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) quite rightly is being described as a flagship and most actively implemented project of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) where Pakistan and China have successfully launched as many as 56 projects in different sectors across the country on the ground. Out of these projects, 26 projects worth approximately US $17 billion have since been completed and 30 projects worth $8 billion are under construction.
The federal government is taking due benefit from Pakistan’s strategic location and has accordingly focused on developing an efficient and well-integrated transport and communication system by connecting remote regions of the country into one road, one Asia chain. With the help of great game changer CPEC, roads and railways infrastructure will hopefully integrate Pakistan with the regional countries which will resultantly help in generating economic and business activities by integrating its markets with Central Asia, the Middle East and other parts of the world.
There is a lot more to be written, pending that for some other time, here are different sectors performance in short in conclusion, please.
GDP grew by 5.97 percent, the agriculture sector recorded a growth of 4.40 percent, the industrial sector recorded a growth of 7. 19 percent, the services sector posted an increase of 6. 19 percent, and per capita income increased to US $1798 in FY22 as compared to US $1676 in FY2021, the crops sector outperformed and posted a growth of 6.58 percent, livestock sector recorded a growth of 3.26 percent, the fishing sector posted a growth of 0.35 percent. On a year-on-year basis, LSM grew by 26. 6 percent in March FY2022. Our LSM 22 subsectors 17 posted growth in varying figures during July-March FY2022, export of services registered a growth of 18.2 percent during July-April FY2022, and the textile sector, especially the high-value-added segments brought two-thirds of the total growth, Remittances posted a growth of 7.6 percent amounting to the US $ 26.1 billion, the Oil import bill surged by 95.9 percent as crude oil imports rose by 75.34 percent in value and 1.4 percent in quantity.
Pakistan’s economy faces several severe challenges. In the short run, Pakistan is confronted with the challenge to finance its external sector finance requirements stemming from the current account deficit and foreign debt servicing. There is an intense need of creating an environment conducive to investments, both local and foreign. There is also a dire need for the continuation of the policies which had brought improvement in related sectors such as the Prime Minister’s Agriculture Package, policies relating to the energy mix and efficient energy supplies. More importantly, there is also a very dire need for stable legislative and political culture in the country.
Realistic Economic Indicators By Muhammad Zahid Rifat
Source: https://nation.com.pk/2022/07/29/realistic-economic-indicators-2/