Sectoral Growth Rates and Efficiency of Factor Use in Large-Scale Manufacturing Sector in West Pakistan

The large-scale manufacturing sector of Pakistan has grown atan annual compound rate of 14.3 percent1 over the period 1949-50 to1969-70. However, one does not know the rates at which differentsub-sectors of this sector have grown in the past. Similarly, earlierstudies done for an analysis of this sector's efficiency were limited tocalculations of effective protection rates [3,7,10] or of comparativecost ratios [2]. What has not been studied before is the magnitude ofthe change in the efficiency of factor use in Pakistan. The absence ofsuch literature in Pakistan stems essentially from the non-avail¬abilityof consistent and reliable time series data at a disaggregated level.Pakistan's censuses of manufacturing industries hereinafter referred toas CMI, carried out almost every year, do contain data at adisaggregated level, but those data suffer from a serious undercoverage.Since the magnitude of the undercoverage shows wide fluctuations, thedata cannot be used for computing growth rates. In an earlier study [4]2an attempt was made to construct a consistent time series of datarelating to the large-scale manufacturing sector. The data reported wereat current prices, which need to be deflated for compu¬tation of growthrates at constant prices