Agricultural growth in the third quarter (October-December) of the current financial year might be negative, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said today.
“I do not know what will be the third quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth, because one disturbing factor is agricultural growth. If we want to achieve 9-10 per cent growth on a sustainable basis, the agricultural growth should not be less than 4 per cent. In the first quarter of the current financial year, it was 2.5 per cent, and in the second quarter it was less than one per cent. In the third quarter, it might be negative. To what extent it will be negative will determine the overall GDP growth,” Mukherjee said here at the annual convention of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce.
In the second quarter, agricultural GDP growth was 0.91 per cent, and the overall GDP growth was 7.9 per cent, against 6.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2009-10.
The overall GDP growth was likely to be 7-7.50 per cent or above for the entire financial year, the finance minister reiterated.
