Hyderabad: Unlike popular belief, it’s the service sector that has been fuelling the growth of the State Gross Domestic Product, not agriculture and industries.
Data available with the TS economic and statistics department has revealed that contribution of agriculture and industry to GSDP has been declining while the services sector remained the main contributor during 2014-15.
The services sector contributed 57 per cent to the GSDP, while it was only 17.9 per cent from agriculture and 25 per cent from industry. The gap has only widened over the years.
A spate of natural calamities like floods, hailstorms and drought conditions in the last decade has adversely affected the output, resulting in a declining contribution to the GSDP.
Finance minister Etela Rajender said these statistics would help the government revisit its policies and priorities. “Though the steep rise in services sector is encouraging, as it provides more jobs to the urban youth, the decline in agriculture is a matter of serious concern. Majority of the population in TS is dependent on agriculture and any crisis in this sector will have a major impact. We have to address this issue at the earliest,” he said.
Besides, there has been no significant investments in the manufacturing sector during the past decade, apart from the crunching power shortage, leading to lower industrial output and lower contribution to GSDP. The deficit in these two sectors were covered by the services sector.
