India's chief statistician says FY08 farm growth likely to be 3.5%

[K.Karthik Raja]

India's chief statistician says FY08 farm growth likely to be 3.5%
Thursday, May 29

NEW DELHI - India's farm sector growth for the year ended March is
likely
to be revised upwards to about 3.5% from the earlier estimated 2.6%,
the
government's chief statistician said today.
"Agriculture growth figures will be significantly higher... They
are
likely to be around 3.5%," Chief Statistician of India Pronab Sen said
on the
sidelines of a function to release the Economic Census for 2005.
The Central Statistical Organisation will detail the revised
estimate on
India's gross domestic product growth in 2007-08 on Friday.
Sen, who heads the CSO, however, refused to comment on the overall
GDP
growth in 2007-08.
The likely upward revision in farm sector growth comes in the wake
of
agricultural ministry scaling up food grain output estimates for
2007-08 crop
season.
Last month, the farm ministry revised its estimate on food grain
production in 2007-08 to 227.32 mln tn, up 8 mln tn from 219.32 mln
estimated
earlier.
However, in the overall GDP, part of the higher growth in
agriculture
could be offset by a slowdown in industry.
According to the Index of Industrial Production, industrial growth
in
2007-08 was only 8.1%.
In its advance GDP growth estimate, the CSO had projected India's
industrial growth in 2007-08 at 8.9%.