Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tabled the Economic Survey of 2022 in the Lok Sabha on Monday (January 31).
The prequel to Union Budget, the Economic Survey is presented a day before, and like every year the Economic Survey 2022 has provided a detailed analysis of how the Indian economy has progressed in the last year. As per the Economic Survey 2021-22, while the service sector has been the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, the farm sector has been resilient to the COVID-19 shock and the least affected by the pandemic.
The agriculture and allied sectors — crops, livestock, forestry and logging, and fishing and aquaculture — have experienced buoyant growth in the past two years. The sectors grew at 3.6 per cent in 2020-21 and improved to 3.9 per cent in 2021-22 fiscal, and been the largest employment generators in the past fiscal. The Survey showed livestock and fisheries sector, which is allied with agriculture, has specifically been experiencing optimistic growth levels and has helped the broad agriculture sector perform well. For instance, in 2018-19 the growth in agriculture was buoyed by the performance of livestock and fisheries, even though the growth of gross value added (GVA) for crops was -1.6 per cent.
As shown by the latest Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households (SAS) report, the fragmentation of landholdings has led to alternate sources (such as livestock, fishery and wage labour) becoming significantly important for an agricultural household. “Growth in allied sectors including livestock, dairying and fisheries has been the major drivers of overall growth in the sector,” the Survey document has said.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the buoyant growth has been possible due to good monsoon and the multiple government measures to improve investments, enhance credit availability, create market facilities, promote infrastructure development in the sector and increase the provision of quality inputs to the sector. The Survey document also hailed the Centre’s further extended the coverage of food security network through additional provisions of foodgrains through the schemes like PM Gareeb Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY).
Hailing the government’s thrust on Atma Nirbhar Bharat (ANB) Abhiyan, the Minister said, “The timely intervention in the form of ANB coupled with other growth-promoting schemes (ANB and other schemes are discussed under respective sections) have further helped agriculture to achieve an improved growth of 3.9 per cent in 2021-22.”
However, while public investment in agriculture and allied sectors has remained stable between two to three per cent over the years, the private investment has dipped and the total agricultural Gross Capital Formation (GCF) has moved in sync with variation in private investment.
In terms of looking ahead, The Survey has suggested that the government prioritise crop diversification, allied farm sectors and alternative fertilisers like Nano urea. It has also pitched for increasing agriculture research and development (R&D) and organic farming, besides the use of new technologies.