For the third consecutive year, Tamil Nadu clocked higher economic growth rate than the national average during 2019-20.
Against the all-India average figure of 4.2% last year, the State’s performance — 8.03% — was almost double the former, according to a perusal of growth rate figures finalised by the Centre a few days ago. The calculations on the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) data have been done at constant prices, keeping 2011-12 as the base year.
As far as the per capita income (based on Net State Domestic Product) is concerned, the State’s figure for 2019-20 was ₹1,53,853, which was at 6th rank at the all-India level. During 2018-19, the figure was ₹1,42,941 with the State standing at 12th rank.
As for the value of the GSDP, the State’s rank was consistently placed at second, next to Maharashtra.
During 2019-20, it went up to the first place, which could be due to the absence of data for the western State.
Macro-level showing
The State’s macro-level showing in respect of the GSDP has been helped by more or less even performance of three sectors — primary, secondary and services.
Particularly impressive was the showing of the secondary sector, which had posted a double-digit growth rate — 10.02%.
Within this sector, manufacturing and construction, the two important components, posted the double-digit figures of 10.27% and 10.49% respectively.
Pointing out that the State’s economy had showed signs of recovery due to the government’s host of measures, a senior official says that unfortunately, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the fag-end of the financial years 2019-20 has disrupted the process.
As per advance estimates for 2019-20, the growth rate of the primary sector, encompassing agriculture and allied activities and mining and quarrying, stood at 6.08%, while it was 6.63% for the services, which covered real estate.
The previous year’s figures for the primary, secondary and the services sectors were 8.49%, 6.49% and 7.83% respectively. Except the primary sector, the other two sectors did better this time than the previous time.
Even in the primary sector, the component of agriculture recorded higher rate – 7.43% - this time than the 2018-19 figure, which was 5.8%.
The segment of livestock did extremely well last year with 11.13%, while it saw a growth of only 6.64% this time.
This could have pulled down the overall growth rate of the primary sector, says another official.
As for the services sector, financial services registered an impressive rate of 11.71%, whereas their figure for 2018-19 was a mere 2.21%. Likewise, the segment of real estate did well with 7.29% against the previous year’s 6.69%.
