National Accounts Committee (NAC) released GDP estimates for 3QFY24 which have shown a growth of +2.09% compared to -0.42% recorded in 3QFY23. NAC has also released provisional numbers for full year FY24, suggesting growth rate of 2.38%, largely in line with our estimated number of 2.5%.

Sector wise, in 3QFY24, agriculture has shown a growth of 3.94%, industry 3.84% and services 0.83%.

Agriculture: All the constituents of agriculture have contributed positively including important crops (+2.89% due to wheat), other crops (+1.14%), cotton ginning (+61.75%) and livestock (+4.20%).

Industry: Despite negative growth of construction industry (-15.75%), industrial growth of +3.84% is attributable to mining & quarrying (+0.63%), large-scale manufacturing (+1.47%), and electricity, gas and water supply (+37.3%).

Services: The overall growth in services is +0.83% in 3QFY24 albeit having mixed trend in its constituents i.e. wholesale & retail trade (+0.38%), transport & storage (+0.91%), information & communication (-5.92%), finance & insurance activities (-7.11%), public administration & social security (-6.38%) and education (10.38%).

1Q and 2Q numbers revised upward: NAC has revised upward the 1QFY24 and 2QFY24 GDP growth to 2.71% and 1.79% from earlier estimates of 2.50% and 1.0%, respectively.

This takes 9MFY24 average GDP growth to 2.2% which came in line with our expectations and higher than Bloomberg survey of 1.8%.

State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) estimates that GDP growth for FY24 is in the range of 2-3% in its half year report released on May 14, 2024. The IMF, in its country report in May 2024, projected a growth rate of 2.0% for FY24, and the World Bank, in its Apr 2024 update, projected a GDP growth rate of 1.8% for FY24.

Courtesy – Topline Research