Executive Summary of the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2007-2008: The News

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
ISLAMABAD: The government on Tuesday released the Economic Survey 2007-08. Following is the Executive Summary of the survey.

Growth and Investment

Pakistan’s economy has shown great resilience against internal and external shocks of very high intensity and grew robustly at 5.8 percent in 2007-08, as against 6.8 percent last year and this year’s target of 7.2 percent. The Commodity Producing Sector (CPS) registered a growth of 3.2 percent in 2007-08 as against 6.0 percent last year owing mainly to the lackluster performance of agriculture and manufacturing. While agriculture grew by 1.5 percent, the manufacturing sector posted a modest growth of 5.4 percent in 2007-08. The large scale manufacturing (LSM) sector witnessed a modest growth of 4.8 percent, down from 8.6 percent last year. The manufacturing sector has been hard hit by political instability, frequent eruptions of incidents detrimental to law and order and the acute energy shortages. In unison with increasing prices for fuel and energy, all these factors have caused slower growth in LSM. Growth in the small scale manufacturing sub-sector moderated to 7.5 percent in 2007-08 from 8.1 percent during 2006-07.

The poor show of the agriculture sector was the result of a sharp deceleration in the growth of the major crops sub-sector, which posted a negative growth of 3.0 percent in 2007-08 as against a healthy growth of 8.3 percent last year. Minor crops registered a growth of 4.9 percent as against the negative growth of 1.3 percent last year. Fishing and forestry exhibited robust growth of 3.8 percent and 11.0 percent, respectively.

The services sector has surpassed the growth target of 7.1 percent and grew by 8.2 percent in 2007-08 as against the actual achievement of 7.6 percent last year. The finance and insurance sector displayed a stellar growth performance of 17.0 percent during 2007-08 as against 15 percent last year. Value added in the wholesale and retail trade sector grew at 6.4 percent as compared to 5.4 percent last year and the target of 7.8 percent this year. The Transport, Storage and Communication sub-sector saw a deceleration in growth to 4.4 percent in 2007-08 as compared to 6.5 percent of last year.

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