Per capita income up 2.9pc to $1561 in 2015/16

ISLAMABAD: The country’s per capita income rose 2.9 percent to $1,561 in the current fiscal year, a document revealed on Monday, as the stable exchange rate kept the growth nominal.

“As the exchange rate largely remained stable so the per capita income also showed a nominal growth in the current fiscal compared to the last year,” said a source.

The document, available with The News, said the per capita income was calculated at $1,517 for last fiscal year. 

The ministry of finance will release the figure of per capita income along with the upcoming Economic Survey (2015-16) before the announcement of the budget for the fiscal 2016-17.

The per capita income grew 9.4 percent to $1,513 in 2014/15 over the preceding fiscal year.

The latest per capita income was based on the population growth rate of 1.94 percent in the current fiscal year as compared to 1.98 percent in the previous fiscal year.  The document further showed that investment to GDP ratio slightly declined in the outgoing fiscal year despite significant investment inflows from China under the $46-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The investment to GDP ratio came down to 15.2 percent from the revised figure of 15.5 percent a year ago. This was mainly due to a downtrend in private investments.  “The private sector investment dropped to 9.8 percent of GDP in the current fiscal year of 2015/16 from 10.2 percent in 2014/15,” said an official. “This also indicated that the private sector is still reluctant to go for the new investments in modernising.”

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said foreign private investment in the country fell 64.7 percent to $635 million in July-April. It was $1.8 billion in the corresponding period of the last fiscal year. Foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio investments are the major components of the total foreign investment.  In July-April 2015/16, the portfolio investment outflows amounted to $381.2 million as compared to inflows of $836.8 million in the same period a year ago.

Chinese investment in the country jumped one-and-half time to $550 million, more than half of FDI in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year. The SBP said the FDI inflows from China amounted to $218 million in the corresponding months of 2014/15. 

The overall FDI posted a growth of 5.4 percent to $1.016 billion in July-April 2015/16 over the same period a year earlier.

Sector-wise analysis revealed that power sector was the main recipient of FDI during the period under review. The inflows of FDI towards the sector posted a sharp growth of 208 percent to $518 million.

The country is attracting foreign companies in various sectors. It attracted substantial amount of foreign investment in mid 2000s in banking and telecommunication sectors.

The official data showed that the public sector investment was up to 3.8 percent of GDP in 2015/16 from 3.7 percent in 2014/15.  It further showed that the savings to GDP ratio also declined slightly as it was down to 14.5 percent in 2015-16 from 14.7 percent.  

—Originally published in The News