GDP grows by 5.5% in 1Q; rate doubles from 4Q of 2015

The country’s economy had grown by 5.5% in the first quarter, the Department of Census and Statistics disclosed yesterday. 

Latest GDP growth reflects a sharp jump in comparison to 2.5% improvement in fourth quarter of 2015 and encouraging as against 4.4% a year earlier.

In terms of value the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at constant prices was Rs. 2.08 trillion as against Rs. 1.97 trillion. 

The Department said the four major components of the economy: Agriculture, Industry, Services and Taxes less subsidies on products has contributed their share to the GDP at current price by 7.4%, 31.6%, 52.4% and 8.5% respectively in the first quarter of 2016. 

During the first quarter of 2016, especially the Industrial and Services activities have recorded a remarkable increase in their overall growth rates of 8.3% and 4.9% respectively, when compared to the 1st quarter of 2015. But overall growth rate of the Agricultural activities have shown only a slight increase of 1.9%.

Among the sub activities of Agriculture, ‘Growing of vegetables’, ‘Growing of oleaginous fruits; including Coconut’ and ‘Animal production’ reported a high growth rates: 16.3%, 10.0% and 5.1% respectively during the first quarter of 2016, when compared to the respective quarter of 2015. Meanwhile the value added of ‘Growing of Tea’ decreased by 11.6% during this quarter and ‘Growing of rubber’ and ‘Marine fishing’ suffered slight falls in the growth rates by 2.6% in each activity.

Especially in this quarter the contribution of the Industrial activities to the GDP has increased up to 31.6% and has recorded a striking growth of 8.3% in the growth rate of overall industrial activities. Among the industrial activities, the ‘Construction’ activity, which corresponds to the high share of the GDP, increased remarkably by 12.0% during this quarter with respect to the first quarter of 2015. In addition, the sub activities of ‘Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply’, ‘Rubber and plastic products’, ‘Manufacture of food, beverages and tobacco’ and ‘Manufacture of textile and wearing apparel’ have shown a considerable growth rates of 10.1%, 7.0% 1.2% and 1.9% respectively, during the first quarter of 2016. Meanwhile the ‘Mining and quarrying’ activity have reported a negative growth rate of 1.5%, over the period under consideration.

The Services activities which contributes a highest share (52.4%) to the overall GDP, recorded a significant growth rate of 4.9% during the first quarter of 2016, when compared to the same quarter in the year 2015. The performance of Services sector was underpinned specially by the sub activities of ‘Financial service activities’, ‘Wholesale and retail trade’, ‘Education service’ and ‘Other personal service activities’ which reported significantly higher growth rates of 15.9%, 5.7%, 5.9% and 6.7% respectively compared to the respective quarter in year 2015.