The Maharashtra Economic Survey for 2011-12 has painted a dismal picture of the State's economy with agriculture sector dragging the growth down.
The estimated growth rate of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) in the current fiscal has fallen drastically to 8.5 per cent, against 11.3 per cent in the last fiscal.
The fall in Maharashtra's GSDP is steeper than the country's GDP. While the country's GDP (advance estimates) has come down by 1.5 percentage points to 6.9 per cent in FY2011-12, in the case of Maharashtra, the GSDP (advance estimates) has fallen by 2.80 percentage points to 8.5 per cent.
Negative growth
In FY2011-12, agriculture and allied activities has shown a negative growth of 5.1 per cent (against a growth of 15.6 per cent in FY2010-11); industry and services have grown at a slower clip of 9.1 per cent (10.8 per cent) and 10.1 per cent (11 per cent) respectively, according to the survey, tabled in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday,
The report has pointed out that production of food grains in 2011-12 is expected to register a decrease of 23 per cent with a production target of 118.09 lakh tonnes as against 154.19 lakh tonnes last year. Production of oilseeds and cotton (lint) are also expected to decrease by 8 per cent and 15 per cent respectively.
Monsoon delay
Due to late arrival of monsoon in agriculturally important areas such as Vidarbha and Marathwada and its erratic distribution, the sowing of major kharif crops was delayed by two to three weeks. It also affected the total crop coverage adversely.
The erratic rainfall in September and deficient rainfall in October have also resulted in reduction of area under Rabi crops and thus the overall production of food grains, oil seeds and cotton is expected to reduce drastically during the current year.
Debt burden
The debt of the government is expected to increase to Rs 2,26,926 crore in 2011-12. In 2004-05, the total public debt was Rs 1,09,167 crore but by 2010-11 it increased to Rs 2,05,689 crore.