India leads South Asia in labour productivity: ILO

India's labour productivity has had the fastest growth in South Asia between 1993 and 2003, according to the World Employment Report released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) today.

India's productivity per person employed shot up by almost 40 per cent during the period, compared to a little over 10 per cent in Pakistan and 20 per cent in Bangladesh.

According to the ILO report, productivity in South Asia grew by 3.3 per cent annually and the level of productivity in 2003 was 37.9 per cent higher than in 1993. Pakistan and Sri Lanka started off well at the beginning of the 1990s.

But with the onset of the Asian crisis in 1997, Pakistan entered a period of productivity decline for two years and has not yet recovered. Sri Lanka witnessed a decline in productivity in 1998 and since then, productivity has more or less stagnated.

The trend has, however, been the opposite when it comes to agricultural productivity, with the gains for India being smaller. This, says the ILO, is an adverse development in a region where agriculture is the main provider of jobs.

Though India was one of the best performers since the 1980s in terms of increases in agricultural productivity, it has seen an increase of only 12 per cent since 1990.

In the same period, Sri Lanka witnessed a growth of 40 per cent. Pakistan and Sri Lanka also have the highest levels of output per person in agriculture, producing more than twice as much per person as India.

According to the report, the unemployment rate (4.8 per cent) and the employment-population ratio (57 per cent) have not changed over the past 10 years despite a solid gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of over 5 per cent in South Asia.