:: Daily Mirror – FINANCIAL TIMES ::
Services Sector
The Services sector maintained its importance in the economy, recorded a 5.9 per cent growth and contributed 53 per cent to overall economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2005. This growth was largely driven by the performance in the post and telecommunications, domestic trade and financial services sub sectors.
Of these sectors, the Transport, storage and telecommunication sector expanded by 11.8 per cent during this period. The post and telecommunications sector which has continued to grow at a high pace, expanded further by 24.9 per cent in this quarter. With the latest CDMA technology, subscriber levels of Fixed Access – Wireless Local Loop phones increased by 159,162 new connections, a notable expansion for this category. The subscriber level of cellular phones expanded by 52 per cent and the mobile penetration ratio (Mobile connections per 100 people) was around 17.
1 Comment
harsha de silva
this is very encouraging and goes to show the benefits of competition in the sector brought about by a combination of economic reforms, liberalization and privatization. also it goes to show the potential of our rural economy; the lower segments of the pyramid!
the post and telecom subsector (post is negligable) contributed to 19% of the growth of last years (2005) gdp (5.9%). this is the highest contribution; even all of factory industry was 15%, financial services 15% and agriculture including export crops like tea, rubber and of course paddy and others contributed only 14%.
the real question is how sustainable is this growth? the 25% growth figure for the last quarter of 2005 is lower than the 30% we saw for the last quarter of 2004.
what we now need to do is to develop the telecoms-based service industry in this country. i feel that is the only way to leverage and sustain this growth. to do that we still have to clear the backbone bottlenecks and have a condusive regulatory environment.