Irish Growth Halved Last Year, Says CSO

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

02 May 2002

Releasing its official quarterly national accounts estimates on Tuesday, the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO) announced that although Irish economic growth halved in 2001 as a result of the tech slowdown, the September 11 attacks, and the global downturn, in terms of economic performance, the Republic of Ireland still outstripped all of the other euro zone countries.

The CSO revealed that Gross National Product for 2002 was up an estimated 5.0% (compared with 10.4% in 2000), and Gross Domestic Product was up 5.9% (down from 11.5% the previous year).

Speaking to the Reuters news service on Tuesday, CSO Director, Bill Keating, explained that: 'Clearly one of the upside factors is that consumer spending remained strong, but there certainly was a slowdown in industry.'

This announcement follows upbeat predictions for the future from Bank of Ireland's Chief Economist, Dr Dan McLaughlin, reported earlier this week. Speaking at a New Ireland Broker Investment Conference, Dr McLaughlin predicted that the Irish economy would grow by around 5% this year, and by 6-7% in 2003.

Commenting to Reuters on the newly released quarterly accounts estimates this week, he observed of the GDP figures that: '5.9% is a lot lower than 11.5% but it's still not a bad performance in an environment where most of the world's economies are struggling to achieve growth of more than 1%.'

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