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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Rural distress may lessen even as agriculture growth may stay flat -Sandip Das and Banikinkar Pattanayak

Rural distress may lessen even as agriculture growth may stay flat -Sandip Das and Banikinkar Pattanayak

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published Published on Sep 15, 2017   modified Modified on Sep 15, 2017
-The Financial Express

The distress in rural India on account of a glut-induced crash in prices of farm commodities will likely alleviate soon as prices tend to look up, but statistical factors will keep farm-sector growth subdued in the short-term.

A crash in prices kept growth in nominal gross value added (GVA) for the agriculture and allied sector above the expansion in real term in Q1FY18 for the first time in five years, but the situation may reverse as early as the second quarter. This is because inflationary pressure has returned from July with the post-harvest seasonal hardening of food prices and a conducive base effect has waned, especially at the retail level. This means the GDP deflator for the farm sector is set to rise during the second quarter, reversing the growth balance in favour of nominal instead of real GVA.

However, an unfavourable base will still weigh on the farm sector growth in real terms this fiscal, especially from the third quarter. So, even if the country maintains last year’s record kharif grain output of 138.5 million tonnes in 2017-18, as suggested by agriculture secretary SK Pattanayak recently, the sector’s growth will remain subdued. The sector had grown at a decent pace of 6.9% and 5.2% in Q3 and Q4 of the last fiscal, respectively; in current prices, the growth rates were even higher at 8.8% and 7.9% respectively.

In Q1FY18, the nominal GVA in agriculture grew just 0.3% against the real expansion of 2.3%, thanks to a 1.7% decline in wholesale price food inflation in Q1 from a year earlier.

Already, the number of districts with the first level of drought trigger rose sharply to 225 by end-August from 104 in the previous month, with parts of central and southern India facing the wrath of erratic monsoon more severely than others, according to the Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre under the department of agriculture.
 
Agriculture scene
 
However, the situation might not turn out to be as alarming as it appears now — by July-end last year, as many as 109 districts were in the first-level drought-trigger category, but only 59 districts mostly spread over Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were finally declared “drought-hit”.

For the full year (2016-17), the real agri growth was as much as 4.9%, which was aided by a conducive base (just 0.7% expansion in 2015-16), apart from the bumper harvest. This means much of the GDP growth in 2017-18 will have to come from the industrial and other sectors for the country to record an expansion of 7% or so and remain the fastest-growing major economy. This will be a key challenge, given private investments

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The Financial Express, 14 September, 2017, http://www.financialexpress.com/economy/rural-distress-may-lessen-even-as-agriculture-growth-may-stay-flat/854150/


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