Bihar clocks 10.5% growth rate in FY 2019-20: Economic Survey

Bihar recorded double digit growth rate in the financial year 2019-20, more than double the rate of growth at the national level then. The growth rate in Bihar in 2019-20 fiscal has been recorded at 10.5 per cent while it was 4.2 at the national level during the period, the Economic Survey 2020-21 introduced in the state legislative assembly during the day said.

The state had clocked 9.3 per cent growth rate in the fiscal 2018-19, the survey said, adding the increase in the succeeding financial year was largely fuelled by the growth of services sector. "Bihar recorded a double digit growth rate of 10.5 per cent in 2019-20 which is higher than the growth rate of Indian economy at 4.2 per cent in the same fiscal," Deputy Chief Minister Tarkishore Prasad said while talking to reporters after tabling the 15th Economic Survey in the assembly.

Prasad, who also holds finance department, said that COVID-19 pandemic has affected the entire world and so has its negative impact on Indian economy and Bihar too. The survey has 13 chapters with every chapter having a section on initiatives taken by the government during the pandemic, he said.

Among the three major sectors (primary, secondary and tertiary), the tertiary sector has recorded a noticeable increase in its share from 57.3 per cent in 2013-14 to 60.2 per cent in 2019-20, the FM said. Within the tertiary sector, two sub-sectors which had noticeably increased their share in Gross State Value Added (GSVA) between 2013-14 and 2019-20 are - Road transport (from 4.4 to 5.9 per cent) and other services (from 10.5 to 13.8 per cent), he said.

The Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) stood at Rs 6,11,804 crore at the current prices and Rs 4,14,977 crore at the constant (2011-12) prices in 2019-20, he added. The Dy CM was accompanied by Finance departments Principal Secretary S Sidhartha, Prabhat P Ghosh, Director of think tank ADRI which has been helping in the preparation of survey.

Sidhartha made it clear that the data given in the survey is that of fiscal 2019-20 though some data has been taken till September 2020 too. The growth rate of the current fiscal 2020-21 will be issued separately later as it is difficult to tell about the growth rate of the current fiscal due to the state witnessing a 'V-shaped' growth, he said.

Bihar has consistently been a revenue surplus state since 2004-05, Sidhartha said, adding that revenue account of the state government remained in surplus during 2019-20. Borrowing by the state government as a share of the GSDP increased from 3.6 per cent in 2018-19 to 4.8 per cent in 2019-20, the survey said.

It added that gross fiscal deficit was 2.0 per cent of the GSDP in 2019-20 which is lower than 2.7 per cent in 2018-19. Stating that the overall contribution of agriculture and allied sector to states GSDP stood at 18.7 per cent, it said the state registered a substantial record production of foodgrains at 163.80 lakh tonnes in 2019-20.

Talking about labour and employment, the survey said that distribution of workers by status of employment suggests that 57.6 per cent of male workers in Bihar were self-employed while the proportion of regular wage/salaried male workers in Bihar was just 9.7 per cent, the lowest among all the states in India.

Noting that Credit Deposit (CD) ratio is quite low in Bihar, the survey said that CD ratio of scheduled commercial banks in Bihar has increased from 34 per cent in 2018-19 to 36.1 in 2019-20 which is lower than the national average of 76.5 per cent.

The low ratio indicates that banks are not making full use of their resources for promoting economic activity in the region from where it has mobilised deposits, it added.