The preliminary estimates of the Quarterly National Accounts published on November 15, by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) show that economic activity in the third quarter of the current year (July to September 2023) recorded a decline in the growth of Gross Domestic Product in volume terms (adjusted for the effect of seasonal variations) of -0.2% compared with the same quarter of 2022.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis (i.e. compared with the second quarter of 2023), real GDP rose slightly by +0.1%, after falling by -1.1% in the previous quarter.
Overall, taking this development into account, real GDP growth would be +0.7% in the first nine months of 2023.
Against this background, real domestic demand contracted by -0.4%, making a negative contribution of 0.4 percentage points to economic growth in the third quarter (-0.2).
The external balance, on the other hand, made a positive contribution of 0.2 points, due to the increase in the volume of exports of goods and services (8.6%), which slightly exceeded that of imports (6.8%).
