Revealing this on Wednesday, the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) has estimated that the GDP stood at Rs 1,049,191 crore, against the earlier estimate of Rs 311,883 crore. The CSO has released the quick estimates of national income, comsumption expenditure, savings and capital formation for the fiscal 1997-98 with a revision of the base year to 1993-94, against the earlier base year of 1980-81.

"The decline in the GDP growth rate, compared with the previous fiscal, has been mainly on account of the fall in agricultural production, which registered a negative growth of 1.3 per cent," said AC Kulshreshtha, deputy director general, department of statistics, planning ministry. In the previous fiscal (1996-97), the GDP growth rate stoodat 7.8 per cent.

Worked out at current prices, the GDP for the year 1997-98 has grown by 11 per cent to Rs 1,426,670 crore, against that of the previous year when it stood at Rs 1,285,259 crore.

"The 5 per cent GDP growth for 1997-98 has mainly come about owing to high growth registered in manufacturing, electricity, communications, banking and insurance, and hotels, amongst others," said Kulshreshtha.

With this, the per capita national income in real terms at the new 1993-94 prices is estimated at Rs 9,660 for 1997-98 as against that of the previous year (1996-97) when it stood at Rs 9,377. At this level, the per capita national income registered a growth of 3.0 per cent.

Gross domestic savings (GDS) at current prices is estimated at Rs 361,518 crore, constituting 23.1 per cent of the GDP against, the previous year's estimate of Rs 344,391 crore. The rise in the quantum of GDS has been owing to the contributions of the household sector, but a fall in contribution from the public sector has come aboutat the same time.

Gross capital formation at current prices stood at Rs 387,377 crore in 1997-98, against Rs 361,687 crore in 1996-97. At constant prices, the gross capital formation stood at Rs 294,108 crore, compared with the previous year's estimate of Rs 285,508 crore.

Based on these indices, the Central Statistical Organisation has also estimated the private final consumption expenditure in the domestic market at Rs 718,269 crore for 1997-98, against Rs 691,182 crore in 1996-97 at constant prices of 1993-94.

The base year for the national accounts statistics would be revised every five years henceforth, according to Kulshreshtha.

The revised national accounts series now would also incorporate several new items in the revised series of national accounts, with 17 main inclusions.