UP’s GSDP shrinks 5.9% in 2020-21

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh’s Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) is estimated to have shrunk by 5.9 per cent in 20202021 following the adverse impact of Covid-19 on the state’s economy, according to the State Planning Institute (Economics and Statistics Division), Uttar Pradesh.

The revised estimates of the state’s income may push even farther the objective of making Uttar Pradesh a trillion-dollar economy in the next five years.

The revised estimates of UP’s income that the State Planning Institute (Economics and Statistics Division) released on September 16 though show a slight improvement in the growth of GSDP (on constant price), the state government will have to mobilise additional resources to push the economy ahead. Advance estimates for 2020-21 (released in March 2021) had shown a contraction of about 6.4 per cent in the GSDP.

A close scrutiny of the revised data released for 2018-19 (revised provisional) 2019-20 (revised quick) and 2020-21 (revised advance) also indicates

that the state’s economy grew at a rate of less than 5 per cent in the past four-and-a-half-year tenure of the BJP government in UP. The GSDP growth in 2017-18 is estimated to be 4.9 per cent. In 2018-19 and 2019-20, it remained at about 4.3 per cent only.

Significantly, the data shows that UP’s GSDP (at current prices) is estimated to have reached Rs 15,82,682 crore in 2018-19, Rs 17,25,860 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 17,39,114 crore in 2020-21. The state government had recently claimed that the GSDP has increased from Rs 17,91,263 crore to Rs 19,40,527 crore (revised estimates) on March 31, 2021.

“These estimates do not paint a rosy picture of the state economy and its performance over the past four years. As per these estimates, the rate of growth of the economy was less than 5% during 2017-20 and (- 5.9%) in the Covid-19 year 2020-21.These rates of growth are much lower than what is warranted by the target of making UP a trilliondollar economy by 2025,” said Professor Yashvir Tyagi, former head of the department of economics, Lucknow University.

Tyagi further said, “A worrisome fact is that an important sector like manufacturing registered negative rates of growth over the last four years. Its share in GSDP is also declining and is less than 15%. For rapid industrialisation of the state, this is not a good sign. The performance of the agriculture sector has been quite good. Even in the epidemic affected year 2020-21, it had a positive growth of 2.7%. Services or the tertiary sector has done well except in 2020-21 wherein it contracted by 7.9%. The above facts should be a sobering reminder to the state government that much needs to be done to put Uttar Pradesh on the fast trajectory of growth.”

The Indian economy contracted by 7.3 per cent in the fiscal year 2020-21, according to the GDP statistics released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) of the Central government on May 31, 2021.

The state planning institute has prepared the revised data on the basis of the methodology provided by NSO and using the data after holding online discussions from March 30 to April 30, 2021.