Covid bleeds economy red

 Hit hard by the corona pandemic, economy saw a negative growth of 1.99 per cent in the last fiscal year 2020-21, according to Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).

Earlier in April, the CBS had projected economy to grow by 2.27 per cent in the last fiscal year, though the Finance Ministry had claimed the economic growth rate of the country stands at 0.02 per cent in 2019-20.

The CBS also projected the economic growth of the first quarter of the current fiscal year also to remain negative by 4.6 per cent. "But the economy is 'recovering at a V shape,' deputy director general of the CBS Hem Raj Regmi said, during a programme today.

This year the economic growth has been based on a rebasing of the economic indicators, which has been done on an interval of every 10 years. "The gross domestic product, based on the revised estimate, stands at Rs 3.94 trillion," according to the CBS.

Unveiling the data today, the CBS also revealed that the economic growth went down by 15.4 per cent during the last three months, between mid-May and mid-July in the last fiscal year compared to the same period a year ago.

The economy was largely hit after the government imposed a complete countrywide lockdown from March 24 last year for almost four months and partial lockdown again for almost another four months. However, the gross domestic product (GDP) has reached Rs 3.94 trillion due to change in the base year for the national accounts. "The GDP size has been estimated in the revised reference year as the government central data authority has switched the base year to 2010-11 from the previous 2000-01 to calculate the new macroeconomic figures.

With the revision in rebasing, the CBS reveals that the contribution of the service sector to the GDP has grown by 8.4 per cent while those of primary and secondary sectors declined by 9.4 per cent and 3.2 per cent, respectively. Likewise, the CBS has revised the weightage of service sector in GDP estimation from 48 per cent to 52.2 per cent. "The weightage of primary sector in the new reference year has been taken at 34 per cent from 37.6 per cent and that of manufacturing sector has been reduced to 13.9 per cent from 14.4 per cent."

The CBS also claimed that the country’s average income stands at  1,134 per capita, based on the new reference year.