Economy posts 4% growth in 2Q

• Services, industrial sectors remain robust; agriculture suffers sixth quarter of negative growth

The country’s economy grew by 4% in the second quarter from a year earlier and slightly better than the 3.8% improvement in the preceding three months. 

The Department of Census and Statistics said the GDP for Sri Lanka for the second quarter of 2017 at a constant (2010) price reportedly reached up to Rs. 2,211,612 million and the GDP reported for the second quarter of 2016 was Rs. 2,125,848 million

The 2Q growth was despite a setback faced by agriculture due to adverse weather conditions. The Industrial and the Services activities recorded higher growth rates of 5.2% and 4.5% respectively whilst agricultural activities reported a negative growth rate of 2.9%.

The four major components of the economy, Agriculture, Industry, Services and Taxes less subsidies on products, have contributed their share to the GDP at the current price by 8.2%, 25.9%, 56.6% and 9.4% respectively in the second quarter of 2017.

The DCS said the agriculture sector of the economy has been affected badly by the unfavourable weather conditions (severe drought as well as heavy rainfall) that prevailed during the last 18 months in many districts of the country and as a result the agriculture sector reported negative growth rates during the last six quarters. 

Among the sub-activities of agriculture, the value added ‘Growing of rice’, ‘Growing of oleaginous fruits including Coconut’, ‘Growing of Cereals (except rice), ‘Growing of vegetables’ and ‘Growing of Spices’ declined by 32.9%, 20.2%, 15.3%, 5.9% and 3.8% respectively during this quarter, when compared to the same quarter of the previous year. However, it is noteworthy that the ‘Growing of rubber’ and ‘Growing of tea’, which recorded negative quarterly growth rates continuously for the last three years, have reported significant positive growth rates of 10.2% and 6.9% respectively in the second quarter of 2017. In addition, ‘Animal production’ and ‘Fresh water fishing’ have reported considerably high positive growth rates of 10.9% and 9.0% respectively. Agricultural activities such as ‘Forestry and logging’ and ‘Marine fishing’ have also reported positive growth rates (5.5% and 3.1% respectively) during the second quarter of 2017. 

The industrial activities, which shared the GDP by 25.9% at current price, have recorded a considerable growth rate of 5.2% in the overall industrial activities of this quarter. Among the industrial activities, the Construction activity, which corresponds to the highest share within the industry sector, grew by 9.3% during this quarter when compared to the second quarter of 2016. 

In parallel with the construction activity ‘Mining and quarrying’ has also reported a significant growth rate of 18.4%. Overall manufacturing activities have grown by 0.9% during the second quarter of 2017. The major proportion of manufacturing activities is shared by the ‘Manufacture of food, beverages and tobacco’ and the ‘Manufacture of textile and wearing apparel’ activities which have reported a 2.2% negative growth rate and 2.5% positive growth rate respectively during the quarter.  

In addition, the ‘Manufacture of furniture’ and ‘Manufacture of rubber and plastic products’ activities have reported significant positive growth rates of 12.4% and 8.4% respectively.

Among the three major activities, the Services activities, which gave the highest contribution (56.6%) to the GDP, recorded a positive growth rate of 4.5% during the second quarter of 2017, when compared to the same quarter in 2016. The performance of the Services sector was underpinned specially by the sub-activities of ‘Financial service activities’, ‘Human health activities’ and ‘Telecommunication’ which reported significantly higher growth rates of  16.4%, 13.2% and 12.4% respectively. 

In addition, ‘Wholesale and retail trade’ and the ‘Transportation of goods and passengers’, which contributes in higher shares to the GDP, have expanded by 4.0% and 1.6% respectively. 

According to the DCS, further details on the GDP estimates for the second quarter of 2017 have been published on the DCS website www.statistics.gov.lk.