Services grew 6.8% in June quarter

The services sector showed a lower growth of 6.8 per cent in April-June this year, against 7.2 per cent in the year-ago period, the financial year's first quarter.

The growth was relatively less in trade, hotels, transport and communication. It is, however, more than the 6.4 per cent growth posted in January-March, the final quarter of the earlier financial year, 2013-14.

According to the data issued on Friday by the Central Statistics Office, the highest growth in the services category in the June quarter was in financial services at 10.4 per cent. Lower, though, than the 12.9 per cent growth in the corresponding quarter of last year and 12.4 per cent in January-March.

Community, social & personal services showed a dip in growth to 9.1 per cent from 10.6 per cent in the first quarter of last year. However, there was a significant jump sequentially, from the March quarter, when these grew only 3.3 per cent, due to reduced government spending.

Trade, hotels, transport and communication services had merely 2.8 per cent growth, compared with 1.6 per cent in last year’s first quarter. It is a sharp drop from 3.9 per cent growth in the fourth quarter of 2013-14, showing the pick-up in GDP growth was “yet to become broad-based,” said Aditi Nayar, senior economist, ICRA.

The key railway indicators of net tonne-kilometres and passenger-kilometres showed a growth rate of 3.3 per cent and 5.5 per cent, respectively, in the quarter.

"In the case of other transport sectors, passengers handled by civil aviation, cargo handled by civil aviation and cargo handled at major ports registered growth rates of 7.5 per cent, 6.2 per cent and 4.3 per cent, respectively," said the ministry of statistics & programme implementation.

The other key indicators of aggregate bank deposits, and bank credit showed growth rates of 12.4 per cent, and 13.3 per cent, respectively, against growth of 13.5 per cent and 13.5 per cent, respectively, in the 2013 quarter.