Economy up 5%

• Services suffer setback in third quarter; industry and agriculture rebounds 

Tackling challenging times, 2015 third quarter growth hit 4.8% year on year while the economy’s performance in the first nine months was 5.2% according to the Census and Statistics Department.

The four major components of the economy: agriculture, industry, services and taxes less subsidies have contributed their share to the total GDP at Constant price (2010) by 7.2%, 26.7%, 57.1% and 9.0% respectively in the third quarter of 2015, the department said in a statement. 

During the third quarter of 2015, all three major economic activities have shown a significant increase in growth rates. It reported 6.9%, 6.2% and 3.4% growth rates respectively for agriculture, industries and services activities. In comparison, in the second quarter services sector grew higher at 7.9% whilst agriculture and industries growth were lower at 5% and 2%.

Among the sub activities of agriculture, ‘Growing of rice’ reported a very high growth (61.1%) and ‘Growing of oleaginous fruits; including coconut’ reported 7.9% of increase during the third quarter of 2015, compared to the same quarter of 2014. Meanwhile ‘Growing of tea’ and ‘Marine fishing’ suffered major falls in the growth rates as 3.9% and 8.6% respectively during this quarter.

Among the industrial activities, the sub activities of ‘Mining and quarrying’, ‘Manufacture offood, beverages and tobacco’ and ‘Manufacture of wood and products of wood’ have showna striking increase of 9.6%, 8.8% and 35.2% respectively, during the thirdquarter of 2015. In addition the ‘Manufacture of textile and wearing apparel’ and ‘Manufacture of chemical products’ activities have reported a decline of 2.4% and 4.2p er cent respectively, over the period of under consideration.

During the third quarter of 2015, specially the sub activities of ‘Telecommunication’,‘Financial service activities’, ‘Insurance, reinsurance and pension funding’ and ‘Wholesaleand retail trade’ have experienced a significance increase in the growth rates by 18.9%,11.1%, 16.1% and 5.6% respectively. In the meantime the sub activities of‘Accommodation, food and beverage serving activities’, Professional services’, ‘Education’and ‘Human health activities’ experienced declines of the growth rates by 1.7%, 19.6%, 9.2% and 6.7% respectively, during the period of concern, the department added. 

“GDP by Expenditure Approach measures the value of goods and services produced in termsof the expenditure or consumption by institutional sectors namely; households, government,financial institutions, non-financial institutions, and Non-profit Institutions servingHouseholds (NPISH). The GDP by Expenditure approach is comprised by mainly, FinalConsumption Expenditure, Gross Capital Formation and External Balance of Goods andServices.”

 In year 2014, the first two major components have been contributed to the totalGDP by 74.8 percent, 33.1% respectively and External Balance of Goods and Serviceshave been contributed negatively to the total GDP by 7.9%.

GDP by Income approach measures the income generated by theproduction process of each sectors namely non financial institutions, financial institutions, general government, household and non-profit institutions serving households. It is consisted mainly of compensation of employees, net operating surplus, mixed income, other taxes less subsidies on production, consumption of fixed capital and taxes less subsidies on products. These components shared the GDP by 26.5%, 49.3%, 6.2perc ent, 2.2%, 6.5% and 9.3% respectively in year 2014.