The Czech Statistical Office released Tuesday morning its preliminary estimate of the Czech GDP for 2015Q4 and the whole year 2015. According to the flash estimate the Czech economy grew by 4.3% in 2015. This was the best result in eight years.
In the last quarter, however, the growth lagged behind expectations (3.9% Y/Y versus market estimate at 4.5% Y/Y) and this was so for two main reasons. The first was extraordinary events in the energy sector and chemical industry. Apart from that, revisions of previous figures has probably also played some role, FXStreet reported.
“Although the growth fell slightly in quarter-on-quarter terms (by 0.1%) we do not overemphasize it. First, the decline was caused by one-off events, secondly the gross value added in the economy increased. That signals that the domestic demand continues to do well”, the report said.
Although a detail structure of the Czech GDP has not been published yet, “we believe it is very likely that the growth remains placed on a solid footing. On the demand side, the main driver of the economy will again be households’ consumption. On the supply side we expect industry and services to be the main drivers of the growth. All-in-all we estimate the pace of growth to slow down in 2016, but it should still post visible growth at around 2.5%,” it said.
The currency, koruna, has been trading just above the central bank’s limit on its appreciation around 27 per euro for more than three months. The exchange rate was 27.03 koruna to the euro in Prague Tuesday.
