Fourth quarter growth to slow

TALLINN - Although the fast economic growth that has appeared in Estonia thus far is expected to decelerate significantly during the fourth quarter, the year-on-year growth in GDP will be more than the Ministry of Finance initially projected, reports National Broadcasting.
The Statistics Board specified on Dec. 9 the economic growth indicators on the third quarter, which was higher than the flash estimates. While earlier it had been stated that economic growth had been 7.9 percent in the third quarter, the real growth was 8.5 percent. In the first quarter of 2011, the year-on-year growth in GDP was 9.5 percent and in the second quarter 8.4 percent.

“During the first nine months of this year, the economic growth in Estonia has been a remarkable 8.8 percent, and during the entire year the growth will exceed the summer economic outlook by the Ministry of Finance,” stated the ministry’s analyst Madis Aben.

The ministry expects this year’s economic growth to be 7 percent and estimates that in the last quarter of the year, the growth would decelerate significantly in comparison to the quarters thus far. Analysts have cautioned that third-quarter statistics do not reflect the impact of the debt crisis, but these effects ought to become apparent in the fourth-quarter results. “Enterprises’ expectations concerning new foreign orders have deteriorated by now and hence it is to be expected that growth in exports would decelerate significantly in the last quarter of the year,” said Aben. The Ministry of Finance predicts that next year the economic growth will be 3 percent and, according to Aben, this complies well with the other projections that have been published thus far.