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| Tuesday, 1 July 2003 |
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Sharp recovery in industrial sector in Q1 2003 By Channa Kasturisinghe The Central Bank of Sri Lanka yesterday said that the country's industry sector which has recorded a significant recovery in the first quarter of this year is showing signs of playing a greater role in the country's future economic expansion. According to the CBSL statistics all four industry sub-sectors including manufacturing, construction, electricity, gas and water, and mining and quarrying grew positively in the first quarter contributing to 5.4 percent growth of the entire industry sector. The recovery of the industry sector's in 2002 which was one percent of the GDPwas relatively slower than the services and agriculture sectors due to power cuts during the early part of the year, continued weak export demand and increased costs of production. Commenting on the 2003 first quarter overall performance the Central Bank Deputy Governor W.A Wijewardana said continuation of a conducive macro economic environment and the current investment climate, both Government and private, could see a higher than projected growth rate realised by the end of the year. "All three sectors recorded positive growth. The services sector reported the highest growth of 7.6 percent and contributed 71 percent of the overall economic growth. The growth in agriculture and industry was 0.7 percent and 5.4 percent. The contributions of agriculture and industry to the overall growth were 3 percent and 26 percent," he said. In the industry sector the manufacturing sub-sector grew by 3.2 percent as against a decline of 2.2 percent during the corresponding quarter of the previous year. The factory industry sub-sector, which covers large and medium scale enterprises, grew by 4.6 percent mainly due to the favourable performance of the export oriented industrial sector. Despite the slower recovery in world demand, the textiles and wearing apparel sub-sector grew by 6.3 percent with increased demand from EU countries and the United States. The construction sector which suffered a setback during the previous two years, grew by 7.6 percent in the first quarter 2003. The electricity, water and gas sector, which contracted by 14.7 percent in the first quarter of 2002, grew by 14.3 percent in the corresponding quarter of 2003. |
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