Portugal’s GDP had the 8th largest fall in the EU at the start of the year

  • ECO News
  • 9 June 2020

While the Eurozone economy contracted by 3.1% in the first three months of the year, the Portuguese economy fell 2.3%. Portugal registered the 8th largest fall, the same as Germany.

The Portuguese economy contracted 2.3% year-on-year in the first quarter as a result of the crisis caused by the new coronavirus pandemic. It presented the eighth largest fall among the euro countries, equal to that presented by the region’s engine, Germany, in a period in which the wealth of all the countries in the Euro Zone shrank 3.1%, reveals Eurostat.

Initially, the National Statistics Institute (INE) had pointed to a contraction of 2.4%, but this figure was revised downwards to 2.3%. This drop, caused by the economy almost halting in the second half of March, is the same as that reported by Germany in the same period. But it is much less significant than those reported by Spain, France and Italy.

According to Eurostat data, the Spanish economy shrank 4.1% in the first quarter, less than France’s 5%, while Italy, the European country worst hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, saw its GDP fall 5.4%.

The strong impact of the virus on the largest euro economies led the Eurozone to contract by 3.1% in the first three months of the year. In the year-on-year comparison, only in the third quarter of 2009, in the midst of the economic crisis, there was a greater contraction, with GDP falling 4.5% in the Euro Zone and 4.4% in the EU – down 2.6% this quarter.