Economy suffers lowest 3Q GDP growth since 2009

Thursday, 20 December 2012 01:08 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The country’s economy in the third quarter has suffered its lowest growth since the end of the war, confirming the slowdown due to internal and external shocks.

The Census and Statistics Department yesterday revealed that economy in the third quarter period of July to September 2012 grew by 4.8% in comparison to 8.5% and 8% growth achieved in 3Q of 2011 and 2010 respectively. It was the lowest since the 4.2% growth rate achieved in the third quarter of 2009.

The 4.8% growth was on the back of 6.4% improvement achieved in the second quarter of this year. The latter was also down in comparison to 8% growth in comparable quarters of the previous two years.

The services sector, the dominant segment of the economy, grew by only 4.6% as opposed to 7.8% in the 3Q of last year, whilst the industry grew by 7.3% down from 10.8% a year earlier. The Agriculture, forest and fishing contracted by 0.5% in comparison to a 6.5% growth in 3Q of last year.

However, the fishing sub-sector grew by 14% though down from 17% growth achieved a year earlier whilst the agriculture, livestock and forestry declined by 2.3%, as opposed to 5.3% growth in 3Q of 2011.

In the industry, construction remained robust with 16.5% growth marginally lower in comparison to 17.3% a year earlier. The manufacturing sub sector grew by 3.3% down from 7.7% whilst the mining and quarrying grew by 16.2%, as opposed to 19.6%. Electricity, Gas and Water sub sector contracted by 0.4% in comparison to 7.1% growth a year earlier.

Under the services sector, wholesale and retail trade grew by 2.2% down from 9.5% in 3Q of 2011 whilst other subs sectors managed to grow either equal to last year’s 3Q or slightly lower. A few sub sectors reported higher growth as against 3Q of last year with post and telecommunications up by 13.7% in comparison to 8.4% growth being one of those.

In tandem with release of third quarter data, Central Bank yesterday revised downwards its growth forecast for 2012, to 6.5% from 6.8% earlier. However in 2013, the Central Bank is expecting a rebound in the economy. See also page 3