COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s statistics office says economic growth rate for the first quarter of 2017 has been estimated as 3.8 percent. The GDP for the first quarter of 2017 was 2,161,770 million rupees against 2,082,544 million rupees reported for the same period last year. “Severe drought condition prevailed mainly in four provinces: Northern, Eastern, North-Central and North-Western from 2016 had an unfavorable impact, mainly on agricultural activities of the country,” the statistics office said.
The four major components of the economy: Agriculture, Industry, Services and Taxes less subsidies on products have contributed their shares to the GDP at current price as 7.0 percent, 30.8 percent, 52.3 percent and 9.9 percent respectively. In this quarter, the highest growth rate of 6.3 percent was reported for Industrial activities while service activities reported a growth rate of 3.5 percent. Amidst unfavorable weather conditions, performance of agricultural activities further contracted and reported a negative growth rate of 3.2 percent.
