THE IRISH ECONOMY grew by 0.2 per cent in the third quarter of 2012, new figures published this morning have shown.
Ireland’s Quarterly National Accounts, published by the Central Statistics Office, show that Gross Domestic Product – the value of all goods and services made in Ireland – grew by 0.2 per cent in the months of July, August and September, when compared to the previous quarter.
The CSO also revised upward its estimates for growth in the second quarter – from 0.0 to 0.4 per cent.
However, Gross National Product – which includes only production by native Irish companies – fell by 0.4 per cent.
This, however, is offset by an upward revision in GNP growth for the second quarter – which is now estimated at 4.7 per cent, up from 4.3 per cent in the original estimates published four months ago.
On a cumulative basis, the upward revisions for the second quarter means that Ireland’s economic output (as measured in GDP) for the first nine months of the year is 0.83 per cent higher than the same period of 2011.
Gross National Product, however, is up by 3.03 per cent – significantly higher than had been expected at the start of the year.
Though the growth recorded in the third quarter is relatively modest, it puts Ireland slightly ahead of growth in the Eurozone as a whole, where output has shrank for the last two quarters, officially putting the 17-country bloc into recession.
Ireland’s third-quarter growth of 0.2 per cent is equal to that of Germany and France for the same period; only Estonia (1.7 per cent) and Slovakia (0.6 per cent) recorded higher growth in the euro area in the same period.
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