Contrary to the notion that the Andhra Pradesh’s economy is performing well, data shows that there is a significant fall in the growth rates of all key macro-economic parameters in the year 2022-23.
The State government has been referring frequently to 16.22 per cent growth in GSDP at current price in the highlights of the economic survey released last week and in the State Assembly.
However, the real measure of growth is better known should be based on the constant prices (2011-12) as calculations based on current prices will also include inflationary impact pushing the growth higher than the actuals.
As per the more accurate method of computing growth at the constant prices method, there was an overall dip in growth rates of the State economy as per advance estimates (AEs) for the current financial year.
While the GSDP growth came down to 7.02 per cent in the year 2022-23 from 11.23 per cent in 2021-22, there was a similar trend in three sectors of the economy as well, as per the data in the state socio-economic survey 2022-23.
The growth rate in agriculture and allied sectors fell from 9.24 per cent in FY22 to 4.54 per cent in FY23. In the case of the Industries and services sector, growth was down from 10.59 per cent to 5.66 per cent and from 10.07 per cent to 10.05 percent respectively.
Other parameters
The total debt of the State Government increased to ₹4,26, 234 crore at the 2022-23 from ₹3,78,087 crore in the previous financial year.
Andhra Pradesh faced a revenue deficit of ₹8,611 crore and fiscal deficit of ₹25,011 crore in 2021-22. In 2022-23, the revenue deficit and fiscal deficit increased to ₹29,108 crore and ₹47,717 crore respectively.
The State Government believes that the State economy is projected to bounce back to pre-Covid-19 levels as the Government “is committed to give special focus on all important sub-sectors and give special push to increase economic growth.’’
On the reasons for the dip in growth, according to an economist with a major public sector bank is that the Government needs to step up focus on capacity building and infrastructure development. “In the budget for 2023-24, we see some focus on these lines. But it should have been there in the previous years too,’’ he added.
In general, the overall trend in the economy was also in some kind of downturn in the current fiscal. The country’s GDP also grew by 7 percent in FY23 as against 8.7 per cent in FY22, as per the Centre’s data.

Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.