ISLAMABAD
The PML-N government will launch the Economic Survey today (Thursday), which would depict that country had missed the major economic targets including GDP growth, agriculture, industrial, revenue collection and exports for the outgoing fiscal year.  
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar would launch the Economic Survey 2014-2015, which would highlight the overall performance of economy. Although, the economic indicators had shown improvement during outgoing financial year over the proceeding year but still remained far away from the targets set at eve of last budget. This would be the consecutive second year when PML-N government failed to achieve major economic targets. Sources privy to the budget development informed that economic wizards of the PML-N govt would hold several reasons responsible for not achieving the targets that included declining commodities prices in international market, economic disruptions due to prolonged sit-ins of political parties, floods in different parts of the country, dismal performance of industrial sector due to energy shortage and decline in credit to the private sector, among others. While announcing the budget last year, the government had set an economic growth target - as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) - of 5.1 per cent for FY2014-15 on the basis of anticipated 5pc growth in agriculture, 6.8pc improvement in the industrial sector and a 5.2pc rise in the services sector.
However, the GDP growth was recorded at 4.24 per cent during FY2014-2015, which is less than the target of 5.1 per cent but higher in last seven years. The GDP growth remained at 4.03 percent during previous fiscal year 2013-14 and average of below three percent during five years of previous government of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). The government also missed the other growth targets of industrial, agricultural and services sectors during outgoing financial year. According to the official documents, the agriculture sector grew by only 2.9 per cent during outgoing financial year, far below the target of 5 per cent. Agriculture sector showed mixed patterns in growth of its components, as its overall growth marginally improved to 2.9 per cent during 2013-2014 from 2.7 percent last year.
Wheat productivity was affected due to prolonged winter, late rains and hailing. Sugarcane area under cultivation reduced due to the low price received by the growers in the last season. This is also reflected in 7.1pc reduction in sugarcane output. Rice and cotton crops showed impressive performance and grew by 3.1pc and 9.5pc respectively. Although three out of five important crops registered negative growth, but livestock sub-sector posted 4.1pc growth - highest growth in the last decade. The performance of other crops comprising minor crops like onion, potato, tomato, fruits etc. during 2013-14 remained below par as it recorded negative growth of 5.4 percent. Keeping in view the cyclical nature of the crop sector, it was expected that ‘other crops’ will post a healthy growth but it could manage the modest growth of 1.1 percent.
The services sector fell short of the 5.2 per cent target and notched up 4.95 per cent. Sub-sectors including transport and communications, wholesale and retail services, housing services, general government services and other services could not reach their targets.
The industrial sector recorded growth of 3.62 per cent during outgoing fiscal year as against the target of 6.8 per cent. In manufacturing sector, mining and quarrying grew by 3.84 percent against the target of 6.5 per cent. Large-scale manufacturing sector recorded growth of 2.38 per cent as compare to target of 7 per cent and small-scale manufacturing sector is likely to grow by 8.24 percent against target of 8 percent during outgoing financial year 2013-2014.  The government has also missed its target for the investment-to-GDP ratio. Against a target of 15.7 percent, the ratio actually stood at 15.1 per cent this year. Public sector investment inched up to 3.9 percent of GDP from 3.4 per cent of last year, while private sector investment declined from 10 per cent of GDP in 2013-14 to 9.7 percent in 2014-15.
Recently, the private sector has shown some appetite for working capital but long spells of power outages, deteriorating law & order situation and other regulatory bottlenecks kept them away from investment.
However, the government missed the national savings target by slight margin. As against the target of 14.6 per cent, the national savings were recorded at 14.5 percent of GDP during outgoing financial year.
The government is likely to achieve the budget deficit target of 4.9 per cent of the GDP by the end of outgoing financial year. However, it is on track to fail in achieving its tax collection target by a large margin. The FBR had fixed the target of Rs2,810 billion but it was revised down thrice, with final figure of Rs2605 billion for 2014-15.
Average inflation for the year 2014-15 is likely to be within the range of 4.5-4.8 per cent as against the target of 8 per cent. With estimated trade deficit at $13.8 billion and remittances at $ 14.97 billion, the current account deficit for July-April 2014-15 is estimated at $ 1.4 billion against a deficit of $ 2.9 billion in July-April 2013-14. Exports stood at $20.2 billion in July-April 2014-15, which are 3.2% less than last year’s level. Imports also remained $528 million lesser than the last year’s level of $34.6 billion.
Remittances reached $15 billion during July-April 2014-15 as against $ 12.9 billion in the corresponding period of last year, thereby showing an increase of 16.1%.