Ukraine's gross domestic product growth accelerated to 5.5 percent in the first seven months of the year compared with a rise of 3.7 percent in the same period a year ago, the State Statistics Committee said on Tuesday.
GDP totalled 253.715 billion hryvnias ($50.24 billion) in January to July and 47.616 billion hryvnias in July when it grew by 7.7 percent in year-on-year terms, the committee said in a statement.
Ukraine's economic growth has quickened significantly in the last three months due to improving world markets for exports, which account for over 60 percent of the country's GDP.
The committee said GDP growth since the start of the year had been fuelled by an 11 percent rise in retail and wholesale trade, 9.1 percent expansion in the transport sector and 7.1 percent growth in the construction industry.
Valery Lytvytsky, a senior adviser to the central bank chairman, told Reuters a double-digit growth in trade, the quickest pace of the growth in the industry since December 2004, became one of the main "sensations" last month.
"It is based on a two-year warming up of the consumer market," he said, adding he expected expansion to remain strong in the retail and wholesale trade.
Over the last two years when Ukraine held a presidential and parliamentary election, the government significantly increased wages, pensions and other social payments.
Trading associations have said sales of new cars and expensive mobile phones were soaring in Ukraine in the last several months. But a more worrying trend for the government is slippage in the agricultural sector, analysts said. Agricultural output fell 1.4 percent in January to July, the statistics committee said.
"This fact could not be explained only by a 10-day delay in the start of the harvesting. There are also serious problems in managing the sector, in particular in the pricing and exporting sectors," Lytvytsky said.
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