The economic slowdown in 2009 is largely due to difficulties faced in agriculture, in particular the cotton sector. In fact, agriculture has suffered from poor spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall and flooding in several regions, resulting in disappointing growth rates in the primary sector: 0.9 per cent and -0.5 per cent, respectively, in 2006 and 2007. Most dramatically, cotton production fell by 33 per cent from 649,400 tons in 2006/2007 to 434,000 tons during the 2007/2008 campaign.