Pakistan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) posted modest growth of 2.09% during the 3rd quarter of the current fiscal year 2023-24, the National Accounts Committee (NAC) said after its 109th meeting on Tuesday.

The NAC also revised upward estimates for Q1 and Q2 of 2023-24, taking them to 2.71% and 1.79%, respectively.

It earlier estimated these figures to be 2.50% and 1.0%, respectively, in the 108th meeting of the NAC.

During Q3 of the current fiscal year, growth in agriculture, industry, and services stood at 3.94%, 3.84%, and 0.83%, respectively, the NAC added in its statement.

“During Q3, all the constituents of agriculture have contributed positively e.g. important crops (2.89% due to wheat), other crops (1.14%), cotton ginning (61.75%) and livestock (4.20%).

“Despite negative growth of the construction industry (-15.75%), the industrial growth of 3.84% is attributable to mining & quarrying (0.63%), large-scale manufacturing (1.47%), and electricity, gas and water supply (37.3%).

“The overall growth in services is positive (0.83%) during Q3 2023-24 albeit having mixed trend in its constituents i.e. wholesale & retail trade (0.38%), transport& storage (0.91%), information and communication (-5.92%), finance & insurance activities (-7.11%), public administration and social security (-6.38%) and education (10.38%),” NAC said in its statement.

As per NAC, revised growth in agriculture during Q1 remained stable at 8.59% against 8.58% presented earlier, the growth in Q2 improved from 5.02% to 5.83% mainly due to upward revisions in important crops (from 8.12% to 12.92%) and other crops (from -0.31% to 0.65%),“ the NAC said.

The committee noted that despite significant improvement in mining and quarrying from 7.78% to 15.46%, the industrial activities were revised from -0.24% to -2.44% due to decline in electricity, gas and water supply from -12.70 to - 27.62% in the revised estimates for Q1.

“However, Q2 growth in industrial activities has witnessed upward revision from -0.84% to 0.09% on account of positive changes in mining and quarrying (from -4.17% to 4.39%) and construction (from -17.59% to -10.85%) despite downward revisions in large-scale manufacturing (from 0.48% to -0.83%) and electricity, gas and water supply (from 1.54% to -0.28%).

“The revised growth in services during Q1 and Q2 has improved from 0.92% and 0.01% to 2.02%.

Govt targets 2.4% growth this fiscal

Moreover, the committee also approved the provisional growth target of GDP at 2.38% during ongoing FY 2023-24.

“The provisional growth in agriculture is 6.25%, whereas it is 1.21% for both industry as well as services,” it said.

Q2FY24: Pakistan sees GDP growth of 1%, below expectatio

The NAC noted that the healthy growth of agriculture is mainly due to double-digit growth in important crops i.e. 16.82% on back of bumper crops of wheat (11.64% from 28.16 to 31.44 MT), cotton (108.22% from 4.91 to 10.22 million bales) and rice (34.78% from 7.32 to 9.87 million Tons).

“Two important crops i.e. sugarcane (-0.39% from 87.98 to 87.64 Million Tons) and maize (-10.35% from 10.99 to 9.85 million tons) have posted negative growth.

Industry in 2023-24, has shown a growth of 1.21% provisionally.

Large scale manufacturing, based on Quantum Index of Manufacturing (QIM), has witnessed a nominal growth of 0.07%.

Electricity, gas and water supply industry has shown a negative growth of 10.55% because of a decrease in subsidies in real terms due to high deflator. Construction industry increased by 5.86% due to increase in construction-related expenditures by private and public sector enterprises

The services industry grew by 1.21% in 2023-24.