Austria's economic growth slowed to 2.0 percent last year as its export-driven mini-boom began to peter out, the Statistics Office said on Friday. The slowdown was mainly due to a marked drop in export growth to 0.8 percent from a revised 9.4 percent in 2007. Gross domestic product growth was still significantly above the euro zone average of 0.7 percent, the Statistics Office said.
The Office's result is higher than the latest estimate of 1.8 percent 2008 growth of researcher WIFO, which compiles the Alpine country's quarterly GDP estimates. The Office also revised upwards its own results for gross domestic product growth in 2006 and 2007 to 3.5 percent each, from 3.4 percent for 2006 and 3.1 percent for 2007 previously, as it continued to update its underlying database.
The data update led to an upgrade of the growth figures for industrial production and construction in particular, said the Statistics Office's Ursula Havel, the economist responsible for calculation of GDP. The Statistics Office's are continuously updated for around three years as new data arrive.
In absolute terms, Austria's GDP was 282 billion euros ($393 billion) in 2008, around 3 percent of the euro zone total. GDP per capita was 33,810 euros, the fourth-highest in the European Union after Luxembourg, Ireland and the Netherlands. Austrian GDP is expected to contract by around 4 percent this year by most forecasters, in line with the euro zone average.
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