BRATISLAVA, October 4, (WEBNOVINY) — Consulting firm Ernst & Young predicts worse-than-expected economic development in Slovakia this year. The company has revised its outlook for Slovakia’s GDP growth from June’s 3.4 percent to 2.8 percent in its latest prognosis. Nevertheless, Ernst & Young still expects Slovakia to rank among the countries with the best results in the eurozone in the medium-term. Based on the prognosis, Slovakia’s economy should grow at the average pace of 3.6 percent annually in the 2012 – 2015 period.
“A drop in spending in the first two quarters of this year resulted from limited investment spending as well as overall spending of households. Confidence surveys indicate only a slight probability of their increase by the end of the year. Consumption will only boost if positive levels of growth of real wages are restored in 2012 – 2013,” partner of Ernst & Young in Slovakia Dalimil Draganovsky comments the released outlook. Export as a key sector in Slovakia’s economy implies certain concerns since results in Germany and the Czech Republic in the second quarter were weak and these two markets account for 35 percent of Slovakia’s overall export. “We expect to see an 11.5-percent hike in Slovakia’s export in 2011 while a substantial portion of this volume has already been accomplished but at the same time a certain slowdown in growth has been registered compared with a 16.4-percent increase registered in 2010. We expect a 7.1 percent increase in this area in 2012,” concludes the partner of Ernst & Young.
The National Bank of Slovakia (NBS) has joined Slovak institutions and bank analysts that revised their assessment of expected economic growth downward last week and decreased the estimated GDP growth to 3.4 percent, instead of the originally projected 3.6 percent. Banks are currently predicting this year’s economic growth at 2.9 percent while back in July they expected the Slovak economy to bolster 3.6 percent this year. Banks share similar expectations for next year as well having revised their prognosis from July’s 4.3 percent to 2.9 percent in August. The Finance Ministry has also updated its prognoses in late August decreasing its outlook for next year’s economic growth by one percentage point to 3.4 percent and slashing this year’s outlook 0.3 percentage points to 3.3 percent.
SITA