Abstract

In the fast changing liberalized global environment where growth and productivity have emerged as the important agents of growth and development, present study is an effort to investigate growth pattern and productivity trends of small scale non metallic mineral products industry in Punjab. The growth of industry has been measured in terms of four variables namely: number of units, fixed investment, direct employment and production. Yearly growth rates have been computed to mirror year to-year fluctuations in growth and compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) have been worked out to find the impact of the policies of liberalized regime on growth of this industry. Productivity trends have been sketched in terms of capital intensity, capital output ratio and partial factor productivities. The study observed that the significant growth rate was observed in the variables namely number of units, fixed investment and production. But the policies of liberalized regime have resulted in qualitative rather than quantitative growth in the small scale non-metallic minerals products industry in Punjab. Highly significant growth rate was recorded in fixed investment and production, a slow growth was noticed in number of units but insignificant growth was gauged in employment during the liberalization period. However, in the overall period of the study, significant growth rate was registered in the case of all the four variables. Thus, it could safely be inferred from the analysis that the liberalization has resulted in jobless growth as the rate of growth of employment has gone down miserably.The profile of labour and capital productivity reflects that in absolute terms the labour and capital productivity and the capital intensity exhibited significant growth rate capital output ratio recorded negative growth during the liberalization period. The comparative profile of pre-liberalization and liberalization period indicates that during liberalization period, productivities of labour