ISLAMABAD (June 05 2003) : Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz will release the Economic Survey 2002-03 on Thursday, with an estimated achievement of 5.1 percent GDP growth for the fiscal year 2002-03.
This estimate is mainly due to enhanced wheat production target of Punjab and increase in hydel power production.
The agriculture growth has finally been estimated at 4.2 percent for fiscal year 2002-03, which was estimated at 3.9 percent when the GDP growth was estimated at 4.9 percent.
Large-scale manufacturing was 8.7 percent and the services sector stood at 5.3 percent.
During the current fiscal year inflation is estimated at 3.3 percent.
The livestock, sub-sector contributing 46.2 percent to the agriculture value-addition, is expected to register a growth rate of 2.8 percent, below its target of 4 percent.
Other two sub-sectors, fishing and forestry, are estimated to achieve a high growth rate of 16.6 percent and 8.8 percent respectively.
The manufacturing sector had been expected to grow at the rate of 5.8 percent during 2002-03 (with 6 percent growth in the large-scale manufacturing).
The provisional estimates suggest that the manufacturing sector would grow by 7.7 percent (large-scale by 8.7 percent and small and medium scale by 5.3 percent).
The drivers of growth included higher public sector spending, improving macroeconomic scenario, increased private sector spending, better water availability, growing industry, improving environment for private sector, and cutting cost of doing where the interest rates have been reduced drastically.
