Major productive sectors of the district are agriculture/horticulture, livestock, forestry, industry, and mining. Agriculture, taken in the broad sense comprising crops, livestock, and forestry, is the major source of employment and income among the district's productive sectors. A reliable estimate of employment generated by the productive sector is not available, nor the value of the total production. As roughly estimated, agriculture accounts for over 4/5th of the manpower and for around 3/4th of the value added in the district's sectors. In the district's overall economy, the productive sectors contribution would be around 35 - 40 percent, the rest being contributed by trade, wage employment, and service sector.

To assist the development of each productive sector, the government has established separate departments. At Sibi the departments of agriculture, livestock, forestry and industries have district level offices to monitor and assist development of their respective sectors.

The government policy with respect to productive sectors is guided by the principle of development through public-private sector cooperation. The line departments that operate in the district are assigned the functions of research, training, and extension in their respective fields to facilitate proper functioning and growth of the productive sectors which are more or less entirely privately owned and operated. In reality, however, their performance is not very satisfactory due to lack of finance, poorly trained staff, lack of motivation and dedication to duty and loose discipline among officials.

The processing and manufacturing units that exist in the area, are local demand oriented. The district possesses neither a good raw material nor manpower base, that could attract industrial investment on a large scale. From these observations regarding prospects of large industrial units, it is, however, not to be concluded that the industry and trade sector does not have any development potentials. On the contrary, the rapid growth of small industrial services and processing units like workshops, flour mills, brick kilns, pottery, etc, and of petty trading in informal sector is indicative of great development potential of the district in these spheres. The process of development at the level of micro enterprises, industrial as well as commercial, can be facilitated and accelerated by providing appropriate facilities such as training, credit, investment, advisory services, etc. Vocational training need be provided to men as well as women on a sufficient scale. Women entrepreneurs need to be encouraged by providing credit facilities, e.g. for buying sewing machines, embroidery and carpet frames, etc.

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