Ukraine's economic growth slumped to 2.8 percent in the first eight months of the year, its lowest pace in the last five years, due to falls in the building and trade sectors, the State Statistics Committee said on Wednesday.
Gross domestic product grew by 13.6 percent in January to August of 2004. The Committee also said in a statement that growth had slowed to 1.6 percent year-on-year in August compared with 14.2 percent in the same month of 2004.
The figures are far below government economic forecasts for the year. The government aims for economic growth of 6 to 6.5 percent this year. Analysts said that goal seems unattainable.
"This has been a miserable year for the Ukrainian economy. Ukraine is clearly on the way toward growth of a mere 2 percent to 3 percent this year," Anders Aslund, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in the Moscow English-language daily Moscow Times.
The statistics committee said the construction sector fell by 7.7 percent year-on-year in January to August while the fall in the trade industry reached 4.3 percent over the same period.