Sri Lanka records 4.8% growth in 2015

Under the revised GDP calculation process, Sri Lanka grew by 4.8% in 2015, marginally behind 4.9% GDP growth in 2014, the Census and Statistics Department (CDS) announced yesterday.      

National Accounts Estimate for the fourth quarter of 2015 and the whole year of 2015, at constant prices, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Sri Lanka for the year of 2015 reached Rs. 8,622,825 million, the department said in a statement. 

The GDP value reported for the year 2014 was Rs. 8,228,986 million resulting a positive growth rate of 4.8% for the year 2015. 

“Accordingly the economic growth rate of the country for the year 2014 has been revised from 4.5 to 4.9%. The GDP value at current prices for the year 2015 has been estimated as Rs. 11,183,220 million,” the statement said. 

The four major components of the economy – Agriculture, Industry, Services and Taxes – less subsidies on products have contributed their share to the GDP at constant price (2010) by 7.9%, 26.2%, 56.6% and 9.3% respectively in the year 2015. During the year 2015, all the three major economic activities have expanded, showing a significantly higher growth rates. 

It reported 5.5%, 3.0% and 5.3% growth rates respectively for Agriculture, Industries and Services activities. 

Among the sub activities of Agriculture, rice and vegetables reported a very high growth rate of 23.3% and 24.9% respectively. Animal production and fruits including coconut reported 8% and 5.1% growth rates respectively during the year of 2015, compared to the year 2014.

Meanwhile tea and fishing suffered slight falls in the growth rates and reported growth rates of these two economic activities were -2.6% and -1.5% respectively during the year 2015.

Among the industrial activities, the sub activities of food, beverages and tobacco, rubber products, furniture and electricity contributed  with higher share to the GDP, 5.6%, 4.7%, 6.7% and 7.8% respectively, during the year of 2015. In addition both the mining and construction’ activities have reported a decline of 0.9% each, over the period under consideration.

During the year of 2015, the performance of services sector was underpinned specially by the sub activities of IT programming consultancy and related activities, financial services and real estate, which reported significantly higher growth rates of 21.1%, 15.8% and 9.6% respectively compared to the previous year.

GDP at constant price for the 4th quarter of 2015 has been estimated as Rs. 2,387,136 million registering 2.5% growth rate compared to the fourth quarter of 2014. GDP growth rates for the first, second and third quarters of the year 2015 have been reported as 4.4%, 7.0% and 5.6% respectively.

During the fourth quarter of 2015, the Agriculture activities have reported a slight decline by 0.5%. In the meantime Industrial and Services activities have recorded positive growth rates of 1.9% and 2.7% respectively.