The Slovak economy continued to grow in the third quarter of 2012, but the pace decelerated to 2.1 percent of GDP year-on-year, according to data published by the Slovak Statistics Office (ŠÚ) on Thursday, December 6. Revised figures from the second quarter show that GDP grew by 2.6 percent, down from 2.9 percent in the first quarter. In a quarter-on-quarter comparison, GDP was rose between the second and third quarters by 0.6 percent when seasonal influences were taken into consideration.
"In the third quarter, the economic performance improved especially due to the ongoing growth in foreign demand," ŠÚ pointed out. The volume of exported goods and services grew by 11.6 percent, which was 1.4 percentage points more than in the third quarter last year. The overall value of imported goods and services was up by 5.7 percent as well, while domestic demand was down by 3.3 percent. "Creation of gross domestic capital saw the biggest drop – of 10.2 percent," the ŠÚ reported, as quoted by the TASR newswire. The end-consumption of households was 0.6 percent lower and the end-consumption of the public administration shrunk by 0.4 percent.
For the whole of 2012, the Slovak economy is expected to grow in real prices by 2.3 percent year-on-year and by 3.6 percent in nominal figures, the Statistics Office announced, citing a prognosis by Infostat. "When it comes to the first quarter of 2013, the dynamics of growth are expected to reach 1.4 percent in constant prices and 2.6 percent in nominal figures," František Bernadič, the general director of the ŠÚ's macroeconomics studies department, said at a press conference on Thursday.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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