Decline in Portugal’s GDP was the sixth-highest in the EU
This Friday, Eurostat updated the GDP data for the first quarter and Portugal recorded the sixth-largest reduction in GDP, in year-on-year terms.
The 2.4% contraction in Portugal’s economy, in the first quarter of this year, was the sixth-largest in the European Union, according to the Eurostat data released this Friday.
On average, the Eurozone economy contracted by 3.2% (revised downwards from 3.3%) year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020, in which it has already been partially affected by the pandemic. In comparison with the previous quarter, the drop was 3.8%. Of the 20 member states for which data are already available, nine countries continued to grow while 11 countries saw their GDP shrink.
In the year-on-year comparison, Portugal is in the group of countries whose economy contracted in the first quarter because of the pandemic. However, it is surpassed by France (-5.4%, the largest drop), Italy (-4.8%), Spain (-4.1%), Slovakia (-4.1%), Belgium (-2.8%) and equalled by Austria (-2.4%). No data were yet available for Greece, Estonia, Ireland, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovenia.
Countries such as Germany (-2.3%), the Czech Republic (-2.2%), Latvia (-1.5%) and the Netherlands (-0.7%) are recording a lower contraction.
The figures also show that in at least nine countries the recession has not yet started in the first quarter: GDP continued to grow in Denmark (0.3%), Bulgaria (2.4%), Cyprus (0.8%), Lithuania (2.5%), Hungary (2%), Poland (1.6%), Romania (2.7%), Finland (0.4%) and Sweden (0.5%).
