GUWAHATI, March 12 — The gap between per capita income of the State and the country continues to get widened and as on today the State is lagging far behind the par capita income at national level. As per the latest Economic Survey, Assam, the per capita income of the country as a whole during 2000-2001 was Rs 16487 at current prices and Rs 10254 at constant (1993-94) prices while the same for Assam stood at a much lower level of Rs 10467 and Rs 5867 respectively.
The report mentions that the total number of reporting scheduled commercial bank offices including regional rural banks in the State at the end of March, 2002 was 1232. The volume of deposits and credit of these banks stood at Rs 11551.63 crore and Rs 3627.07 crore respectively at the end of the aforesaid period.
The credit-deposit ratio in the State as on March, 2002 was 31.4 per cent which turned out to be much lower than the national level of 62.3 per cent during the same period.
As regard the scenario of manpower supply and demand, the data available from employment exchange of the State reveal that the total job-seekers in the live register decreased to 15.25 lakh at the end of December 2001 from 15.72 lakh at the end of December, 2000. Similarly, the placements have also decreased to 942 during the year 2001 from 1383 in 2000.
However, the Economic Survey report raised alarm over decline in production of foodgrains. The year 2001-2002 turned out to be not a good year as far as agriculture production was concerned. During the year the totals production of foodgrains in the State has been estimated at 40.28 lakh tonnes in 2001-02 as against 41.73 lakh tonnes in 2000-2001, thereby showing a decline of 3.5 per cent over the previous year.
As per available estimates production of winter rice recorded decrease to 27.13 lakh tonnes in 2001-2002 from 27.60 lakh tones in 2000-2001. Similarly, production of summer rice showed decrease to 6.53 lakh tonnes in 2001-2002 from 6.81 lakh tonnes in 2000-2001 and production of autumn rice also declined to 4.48 lakh tonnes in 2001-2002 from 5.58 lakh tonnes in 2000-2001.
While the production of total rice which is the most important cereals crop grown in the State has recorded a decrease in the output during the year report, the production of wheat also decreased marginally to 0.85 lakh tonnes during 2001-2002 from 0.86 lakh tonnes during the previous year.