Nepal to achieve 5.2% economy growth

Nepal's economy will grow by 5. 2 percent during the current fiscal year, up from 3.5 percent which the country had achieved in the last fiscal year, recent government estimates shows. The preliminary estimates report released by Nepal's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) on Tuesday in Kathmandu, said such a growth has been estimated for the first time in half a decade since 2007-08. The report attributes the estimated growth to the improving performance of agriculture and non-agriculture sector. The CBS unveiled its estimation, Report on National Accounts- 2014, on the basis of economic activities that took place during the first eight months of the current fiscal year. Nepal government had however targeted the growth rate at 5.5 percent in its annual budget for the fiscal year 2013-14. Similarly, the CBS prediction of Nepal's economic growth also does not match with what major donors including Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank (WB) had forecasted. According to the ADB and WB, Nepal will achieve economic growth of 4.5 percent in the current fiscal year. "Nepal's economy that witnessed continued downward trend for the last five fiscal years seems to be reviving during the current fiscal year," said Bikash Bista, director general of CBS during the report launch program. The report said service sector will make 62 percent contribution to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) followed by 31 percent from agriculture and remaining 7 percent from the industrial sector. The CBS report also estimates the size of the poor South Asian country's economy to increase to 19.4 billion U.S. dollars in the current fiscal year, slightly up from 19.2 billion U.S. dollars in the fiscal year 2012-13. "Per capita income in the fiscal year is projected at 717 U.S. dollars compared to 713 U.S. dollars in the last fiscal year," states the report.