Estonia tops EU growth charts

Mar 04, 2010
Oskars Magone

Estonia posted the highest quarter-on-quarter growth rate in the fourth quarter of last year.

TALLINN - A recent set of data published by eurostat, the EU's official statistics agency, have revealed that Estonia had the fastest growing economy in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Estonia's economy grew 2.6 percent quarter-on-quarter at the end of last year. Slovakia had the second highest growth rate at 2 percent.

Lithuania saw 0.5 percent growth over the same period. Lativa, by contrast, suffered a 3.2 percent decline, the statistics agency said in a press release Thursday.

Despite the upbeat quarterly indicators, The three Baltic States were by far the worst performers year-on-year.

Compared to the same period in the previous year, Estonia's economy contracted by 9.4 percent - though this comes off a more than 15 percent decline the previous quarter. This was more than 2 percent worse than the next closest country, Romania at 6.9 percent.

Lithuania's year-on-year data was even worse at 13.2 percent. Latvia's was worse still at 17.9 percent.

The top performer in Q4 year-on-year -- and the only one to show positive growth -- was Poland at 2.8 percent.

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