Sri Lanka's economy grew 4.8-pct in 2015: Census Department

Mar 15, 2016 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s economy has grown 4.8 percent in 2015 against the 4.9 percent growth recorded in the previous year, the statistics department said.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Sri Lanka for the year of 2015 (January to December) has reached up to 8,622,825 million rupees.

The GDP value reported for the year 2014 was 8,228,986 million rupees resulting a positive growth rate of 4.8 percent for the year 2015.

However, the economic growth rate of the country for the year 2014 has been revised from 4.5 to 4.9 percent. The GDP value at current prices for the year 2015 has been estimated as 11,183,220 rupees.

In 2015, all the three major economic activities have expanded showing a significantly higher growth rates.

It reported 5.5 percent, 3.0 percent and 5.3 percent growth rates respectively for Agriculture, Industries and Services activities.

The four major components of the economy: Agriculture, Industry, Services and Taxes less subsidies on products has contributed by 7.9 percent, 26.2 percent, 56.6 percent and 9.3 percent respectively in the year 2015.

Among the sub activities of Agriculture, ‘Growing of rice’ and ‘Growing of vegetables’ have reported a very high growth rates: 23.3 percent and 24.9 percent respectively and ‘Animal production’ and ‘Growing of oleaginous fruits; including coconut’ reported 8.0 percent and 5.1 percent growth rates respectively during the year of 2015, compared to the year 2014.

Meanwhile ‘Growing of tea’ and ‘Marine fishing’ suffered slight falls in the growth rates and reported growth rates of these two economic activities were -2.6 percent and -1.5 percent respectively during the year 2015.

Among the industrial activities, the sub activities of ‘Manufacture of food, beverages and tobacco’, ‘Manufacture of Rubber products’, ‘Manufacture of furniture’ and ‘Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply’ with higher share to the GDP, have shown a considerable growth rates of 5.6 percent, 4.7 percent, 6.7 percent and 7.8 percent respectively, during the year of 2015.

In addition both the ‘Mining and quarrying’ and ‘Construction’ activities have reported a decline of 0.9 percent each, over the period under consideration.

During the year of 2015, the performance of Services sector was underpinned specially by the sub activities of ‘IT programming consultancy and related activities’, ‘Financial service activities’ and ‘Real estate activities’ which reported significantly higher growth rates of 21.1 percent, 15.8 percent and 9.6 percent respectively compared to the previous year.

It was revealed that the GDP at constant price for the 4th quarter of 2015 has been estimated as 2,387,136 million rupees registering 2.5 percent growth rate compared to the 4th quarter of 2014. GDP growth rates for the1st, 2nd and 3rd quarters of the year 2015 have been reported as 4.4 percent, 7.0 percent and 5.6 percent respectively.

During the 4th quarter of 2015, the Agriculture activities have reported a slight decline by 0.5 percent. In the meantime Industrial and Services activities have recorded positive growth rates of 1.9 percent and 2.7 percent respectively.