Geography, Agriculture, and Structural Transformation in South Asia: A Descriptive Analysis of Agricultural Value Added (% of GDP), 2010–2025
Agricultural value added (% GDP), structural transformation, South Asia, geographical typology, sectoral diversification, agroprocessing
AuthorsAbstractOver the years, agriculture has been the mainstay of economies and rural livelihoods in South Asia, but as countries turn to industry and services, its contribution to gross domestic product has steadily decreased. Using the countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, and Afghanistan as reference points, the study uses value added in agriculture, forestry and fishing, percentage of GDP from 2010–2025 to show the impact on changes (World Bank, 2025a). The analysis is based solely on open-source data, specifically the NV.AGR.TOTL.ZS indicator from the World Bank, which is compiled from national accounts, statistical offices, and central banks. This analysis indicates that the regional average has hovered around 15.7% in recent years, with higher levels observed a decade earlier, although this has displayed considerable variation (Trading Economics, 2024; World Bank, 2025b). The essence of the paper is that it sorts countries by geography. Rugged highland and landlocked countries like Nepal and Afghanistan still maintain larger shares devoted to agriculture. This is because they grapple with transport problems of being landlocked, and climatic problems of being highland. On the other hand, the large Indo-Gangetic plains in India and Pakistan allow the two countries to diversify faster using irrigation and markets. Furthermore, coastal or island countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka mix in farming with garments tourism or remittances (Asian Development Bank, 2025). Basic tools, namely trend line, average, standard deviation and ranking, reveal patterns that show plains economy shedding agrarian dependence faster than others (Jha & Afrin, 2018). The uneven nature of these paths is reminiscent of old debates on structural transformation whereby it is argued that labour flows from low productivity farms to dynamic sectors to promote growth. However, South Asia’s pace of transformation appears to be far slower than that of East Asia. This has been attributed to traps based on type of terrain combined with a slow pace of industrialisation (Gollin et al. 2014). Policymakers can benefit by boosting agro-processing, rural jobs and resilient value chains to tap the demographic bulge The work aims to prioritize replicable and transparent data. It fills a gap left by recent region-wide snapshots and establishes a baseline for deeper sustainable rural future research.
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