Kerala registered a growth rate of 6.98 per cent in 2008-09, which is slightly higher than the national growth rate of 6.7 per cent in the year, according to the Economic Review tabled in the State Assembly on Thursday.
The State's economy had grown by 9.79 per cent the previous year.
The deceleration in growth in 2008-09, apparently, reflects the impact of the global recession which began that year.
However, the 6.98 per cent growth rate signifies that the State had acquitted itself rather well during the year that marked the beginning of the recession.
The year saw the primary sector growing by 0.81 per cent (at constant prices) against a decline of 3.2 per cent the previous year.
The growth in the secondary sector slumped (only slightly) to 10.24 per cent in 2008-09 against 10.66 per cent the previous year and that in the tertiary sector went down to 7.02 per cent from 12.64 per cent. The survey says the trends during the current year (2009-10), when the recession really unfurled, suggested a further slowing down of the growth rate.
Things not bad
But “things certainly have not been as bad as feared at one stage,” it says.
The survey expects the coming year also to be challenging. “The world capitalist crisis persists and a new element of concern in the form of food inflation is before the people. Further, the free trade agreement India had signed with the ASEAN countriesis sure to bring price uncertainties for the State's cash crops.” The survey stresses the need to further strengthen the public distribution system in the context of food inflation and to vigorously pursue programmes for generating employment for the rural and urban poor.
“A continuation of meaningful planning in a State like Kerala requires… not only good faith on the part of the State government and efficient husbanding of State's finances. It requires, above all, a change in orientation of national policies as well,” says the survey, putting the observation against the background of the neo-liberal policies, the anti-federal tendencies and resource centralisation tendencies of the Union government.
