The fiscal year 2023-24 is likely to close with a mixed performance by the economy. On the positive side, there has been a modest recovery in the GDP growth rate to 2.4%, from negative 0.2% in 2022-23.
Bulk of this growth is from the agricultural sector, which has demonstrated a very strong recovery from the devastation caused by the floods in 2022-23.
The sector has achieved a high growth rate of 6.3% in 2023-24. The major crop sector has performed exceptionally well, with an extraordinarily high growth rate of 16.8%.
The second major area of success has been the successful containment of the current account deficit in the external balance of payments. Over the first eleven months of 2023-24 it is down to only $0.5 billion.
Exports of goods have shown a healthy growth rate of over 11%, while imports have been restricted, resulting thereby in a fall of 2.3%.
The financial account of the balance of payments has turned positive at $4.2 billion, from a negative $1.2 billion in 2022-23. This is primarily due to a bigger net inflow of loans and deposits of $2.6 billion, as compared to a net outflow of $1.5 billion in 2022-23.
Overall, in the first eleven months of 2023-24, there is a balance of payments surplus of $2.4 billion, as compared to a large deficit of $5.3 billion last year.
Coupled with a net inflow from the IMF of $2.2 billion this year, as the net funding under the Stand-by Facility, the foreign exchange reserves have risen to the current level of $9.1 billion. They were only $4.4 billion at the end of 2022-23.
The third area of improvement is the progressive decline in the rate of inflation. It had attained peak on a........